Untitled dark ha
by Raberba girl
Summary: In this story are characters who do things, ok thanks.
1. Chapters 1-3

A DreamWorks' _How to Train Your Dragon_ fanfic by Raberba girl

A/N: **PLEASE DON'T READ THIS FIC ON FFN. READ IT ON AO3 OR DEVART INSTEAD.** I'm tired of dealing with complainers, though, so I'm no longer going to respond to those kinds of messages.

Some parts of this fic are easier to understand if you've read my one-shot _Each Day Of Life_ first.

Warnings for abuse.

 **Chapter 1 (rough draft)**

The Hooligan tribe was gathered on the shore at dusk, keeping vigil as two funeral ships burned. Gone was their mighty chief, who had fearlessly led them through many years of war and famine and bitter cold; gone was his brother, the only other man in the village who could even have come _close_ to filling the emptiness left in the wake of Stoick the Vast's passing. The brothers had died well, warriors to the end, defending their beloved people. For them, the sorrows of this life were past.

It was only the living who still had things to regret and to fear.

Even in the respectful hush, many apprehensive or outright despairing glances were cast toward the two young men at the head of the crowd. Seventeen-year-old Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III and Snotlout Jorgenson were rival heirs to the chieftainship, and though they both now stood sober and grieving as they watched their fathers' souls depart, it was only a very short matter of time before they would have to take ugly notice of each other again.

Only one of them could become the new chief. The right belonged first to Hiccup, Stoick's son; but every single person on the island, including himself, knew how completely unsuitable he was for the role. It was almost a given that his cousin would challenge him and defeat him and win the crown instead.

 _'And then it will be the beginning of the end,'_ Astrid Hofferson thought bitterly as she watched the two young men. Hiccup was a pathetic scrap of a human being who bore no resemblance to a true Viking; he was a walking disaster who had damaged his own village badly enough while his father lived, and would probably destroy it completely now that there was no one left to keep him in check.

Yet it wasn't as if Snotlout was much better. The brawny young man was boastful without the wits to back it up, he was impulsive and reckless, he was _stupid_ , and maybe it would take him longer but Astrid _knew_ that Snotlout would eventually lead the Hooligans to destruction just as thoroughly as Hiccup could.

Astrid's hands clenched. She knew that _she_ was by far the best candidate for chief. She was certainly strong enough, intelligent enough, brave enough, and determined enough. She could lead these people, she could continue to wage this ancestral war, and she could do it just as well, in her own way, as Stoick had. Yet because she was _female_ , she was automatically barred from the role she felt like she was born for. It was unbearable. Her people were going to die, she had the means to save them, yet she was going to be forced by _tradition_ to stand aside and just _watch_ as Snotlout or Hiccup obliterated her home.

Astrid was not going to let that happen. No matter what price she had to pay, she would pay it, because she knew her duty and it was not within her to flinch away from it. _'Tomorrow. I'll tell him first thing_ tomorrow _.'_

o.o.o.o.o

Hiccup felt completely numb. He knew in a distant, intellectual way that his father was dead, struck down at last in this never-ending war. Yet he couldn't seem to make himself believe it, even after seeing Stoick's body laid out on the pyre and then set aflame.

That whole evening, as Hiccup shuffled home to his empty house and made a supper he couldn't bring himself to eat and then just lay there on his bed in the dark, staring up at the ceiling, he kept expecting his father to come striding in at any moment. Those giant footsteps, that gruff voice, the very breathing and movements and smell of the man, Hiccup _could not_ make himself believe that they were gone forever.

"What am I supposed to do now, Dad?" he whispered.

He would not be chief, he knew that. He knew that he was _supposed_ to be, that that's what his father would have wanted (albeit apprehensively), but he knew that it was never going to happen. Snotlout was his cousin, Snotlout had a claim to the throne, and though that claim was slightly weaker, Snotlout himself was a _lot_ stronger and a _lot_ more highly favored by the tribe. Hiccup could step aside gracefully and bow to the inevitable, or he could fight for his birthright and get pounded to a pulp and lose it anyway. _'At least it's an easy choice,'_ he thought bitterly.

It wasn't as if he'd even be _able_ to lead these people, anyway. They wouldn't listen to him, they probably wouldn't even be able to _hear_ him with his thin, reedy voice. He couldn't pick up a real weapon, he wouldn't be able to lead them into battle. He'd probably get fried by a dragon in the very next raid and then Snotlout would be chief anyway...

 _'It should have been me,'_ Hiccup thought. _'It should have been me that died, not you. It was_ always _supposed to be me, right from the very start. ...Maybe this is your punishment, Dad, for letting your little runt live when you should have sent me drifting out to sea instead.'_

That was when Hiccup finally cried, the tears and sobs muffled by his pillow, unseen and unheard by a single soul.

o.o.o.o.o

Astrid had promised herself to do it first thing in the morning, but of course eating breakfast and getting dressed and such came first. Then she noticed that her axe needed maintenance, and then her mother needed her to run an errand, and of course when she came across a couple of kids doing something stupid, she had to knock their heads together before someone got hurt because of their foolishness.

It was nearly noon before Astrid realized that she was procrastinating. Furious with herself, she marched straight to the forge. "HICCUP."

He promptly dropped whatever he was working on, yelping as it fell into the fire and scattered coals everywhere. He rushed around flustered and stammering as he tried to fix what had happened.

Astrid watched, not saying a word, half-consciously curling and uncurling her fingers as she tried to get used to the idea of living in the same house as this creature. She couldn't quite bring herself to imagine him touching her.

"A-Astrid, what a, um, what brings you, uh, do you need-?"

"I need to speak with you alone," she said brusquely. Both of them glanced at Gobber, who was watching with open curiosity.

"You...need to...?"

"Ugh!" Losing her patience, she seized the front of Hiccup's tunic, dragged him into the back room, slammed the curtain closed (wishing it was a door), then shoved him against the wall so hard that he squeezed his eyes shut and mouthed silently in pain for several seconds, even after she started talking. Or, rather, hissing in his face. "Today's your lucky day, Hiccup."

"Uh, what, uh-"

"You win. Okay? _You win_."

"Uh..."

Odin's beard, was he even _capable_ of speaking coherently? Or was he really _that_ besotted, that he couldn't put two intelligent words together whenever he was in her presence? "You get to marry me," she snarled.

He gaped at her.

"Today." _'Before I lose my resolve.'_ "Ask my mother for my hand in marriage." There was no one else to ask, since all her male relatives were dead. "She'll say yes." After staring at his dying fish face for a while, Astrid gave up, rolled her eyes, gave him another shove, then stormed away in disgust, trying not to think about what she had just done.

She couldn't bear the suspense, so she went out to woods to train for a few hours. When she came back to the village, her steps slowed to a trudge, and it took her twice as long as it needed to for her to get to her house. She found her mother repairing the wall that had gotten damaged in the last raid. "Mom?"

"Can you deal with supper tonight?" Mrs. Hofferson asked wearily. Astrid didn't usually cook, since making edible meals was...not her forte, but sometimes her mother was too tired to care.

"Mom, I... Is it all settled, then?"

The woman squinted at her in confusion. "Is what settled?"

Astrid's mouth went dry. "H...Hiccup. Did he...come see you...?"

" _Hiccup_?" She sounded incredulous. "What business would he have with me?"

A surge of anger swept through Astrid. She spun around and charged over to the forge. The two occupants were taking a break, chatting quietly as they drank mugs of ale. As Astrid stormed in, Hiccup's eyes went wide, and he immediately set his mug aside and jumped to his feet. "A-Astrid-"

"WHY DIDN'T YOU TALK TO MY MOTHER."

He gaped at her.

She seized the front of his tunic and jerked him closer so violently that he flinched and flung up his hands as if he expected her to punch him. "Y-You, you did, I-"

"HICCUP." She was too angry to even think what to say. Hadn't he been slavering over her for the past seven years?! Why hadn't he jumped at the biggest opportunity of his pathetic life?!

"You... Were you - _serious_?!"

She really had to stop herself from hitting him. "DO I _LOOK_ LIKE I'M JOKING."

"No," he gasped, "no no no no, you do not look like you are joking."

She turned and thrust him before her, vaguely intending to propel him all the way to her house.

"Astrid, w- _wait_! Wait, Astrid, wait, I-I have to, I have to-"

She swung him around until his face was an inch away from hers. "WHAT."

He gulped. "I...have to...th-think about this, Astrid."

"...You have to think. About. _This_?" It strangely shook her. All this time, she thought that any human male would kill for the chance to marry her, Hiccup included. So why the sudden hesitation?! What could _possibly_ be wrong with her that would make him hesitate?! _'No, no, it's not me, it's_ him _, of course it's him,_ everything's _wrong with him, of_ course _he'd do something like this just when I most need him to be predictable...'_

"Astrid," he whispered, and it was almost a sob. " _Why_ do you want to marry me all of a sudden?!"

"You can be sure I didn't suddenly fall in love with you," she hissed. "I _need_ you, Hiccup- No, _Berk_ needs you. No! Berk needs ME! And if I have to marry _you_ in order to do what's best for Berk, Freyja help me, I will make that sacrifice! Now go find some witnesses and make an offer to my mother!"

An odd change came over his face as she spoke. There was a long pause when she finished, and then he said quietly, "You're making a bid for the chieftainship, aren't you."

Her hand, still fisted in his tunic, trembled a little, but her voice was even. "It's either me or Snotlout, and I'd kill Snotlout before I let him lead us to our deaths."

Hiccup didn't ask whether she'd kill him for the same reason, too. "...I'll speak to her tomorrow." Then, before Astrid could forbid the delay, "My father just died _yesterday_ , I haven't had a chance to even _look_ at the accounts yet, I have no idea how much I can afford for a bride-price and a morning-gift-"

"Fine! _Fine_." She shoved him away. "Tomorrow, Hiccup. Don't you dare weasel out of this." After a hard look to make sure he knew that she would hold him to his word, she left.

o.o.o.o.o

Hiccup felt so physically weak after Astrid was gone that he had to sit down so that he wouldn't collapse to the floor. "D-Did you... _see_ that?!"

"Aye, lad," Gobber said carefully.

"That really happened, didn't it?! I'm not just dreaming it...?!"

"What are you gonna do, Hiccup?" his mentor asked, sounding more curious than anything else.

Hiccup buried his hands in his hair as he bowed over. A part of him was super-excited, but most of him was unexpectedly horrified. He felt a little sick. Much as he had always longed for Astrid, he had never expected to actually get her - and even in his wildest dreams, he had never even thought of the possibility that she might...might claim him like a piece of property, marry him solely so that she could use him.

She would never love him. He could perhaps live like that, it wasn't as if love was a requirement for marriage. What sickened and terrified him was the thought that he would have to marry someone who so utterly despised him.

He couldn't do it. Sex would be impossible, having to bare his subpar body before her scornful eyes, and even if she completely rejected him and refused to let him touch her (which seemed like a pretty likely possibility...), he would still have to _live_ with her. There would be no peace, no refuge; always her disgust and disappointment and criticism, always the whispers that would follow him wherever he went, the shame of being married to a woman who was his superior in every respect, who could break him in half if she wanted, who would dominate him and steal his birthright for herself and never see him as worthy of respect...

"I have to go home," Hiccup gasped out, and hurried out of the forge without waiting for Gobber's response.

He couldn't do this. Astrid Hofferson was meant for him only in daydreams, he couldn't marry her in real life. Yet he didn't dare reject her, so there was only one choice left: he'd have to take the coward's way out and just run away. He'd pack his things, wait until the village was settled for the night, sneak out, find a boat that could take him away from the Barbaric Archipelago forever...

Astrid caught him when he made a run for it in the dead of night. She was _waiting at the docks_ as if she'd expected him to flee. She caught him and started to hurt him before he surrendered, then she dragged him back and made him speak to her mother that very night. They'd have to wait until morning to find some witnesses and make the official negotiations, but Astrid insisted on forcing him to at least give his word to her mother.

"I-I-I-"

"Astrid, what _is_ this?" the woman snapped, yawning. She did not at all appreciate getting dragged out of bed at one o'clock in the morning.

"Hiccup has something to ask you," Astrid said forcefully.

Hiccup tried to make himself just _say_ it without thinking about it. "I'm asking Astrid to marry me," he blurted.

Mrs. Hofferson stared at him.

"Say yes, Mom," Astrid said, pained by simply having to say the words.

" _What_?"

Hiccup was miserably silent.

"Hiccup is asking for my hand in marriage," Astrid ground out. "I consent. We're going to call witnesses tomorrow to negotiate the marriage contract."

"...Hiccup, I need to speak with my daughter alone for a minute."

"Sure, sure," Hiccup said instantly. "I'll just step out-"

"Don't you _dare_ try to run off again," Astrid snarled, "or I will _track you down_."

"Y...Yes," Hiccup gulped.

Once he was out of earshot, Mrs. Hofferson burst out, "Are you out of your mind?!"

"I need to do this, Mom." Grimly, Astrid explained her reasoning. Her mother listened, made some half-hearted arguments, then just held her for a long time. Finally she said, "If anyone can make this work, it's you. I know we can depend on you. Go with grace, Astrid."

"Thanks, Mom," she whispered.

The negotiations went by in a blur for Hiccup. He spent most of his time working so hard in the forge that he didn't have to think about his impending nuptials at all. The rare times when he couldn't avoid it, he tried to convince himself of the advantages of this. He'd be married to _Astrid Hofferson_ \- it surely wouldn't be anything like his daydreams, but at least he'd have a _chance_ at...well, at more physical interaction with her than he'd have a hope of getting otherwise. Snotlout would not be chief. Maybe they'd actually have a shot at winning the war, with Astrid at their head.

Hiccup started to drink more than he should, until the resulting clumsiness and physical misery nearly got him killed in the forge. Unhappy as he was, he hadn't sunk so low as to seriously consider suicide, so he sobered up pretty quickly. The next release he found was drawing, which seemed to work better... Patterns, likenesses, whimsical inventions that even he recognized were too crazy to ever actually work. He filled pages and pages until the waste of paper started becoming problematic, then he drew with chalk on the walls and floor of his house and the backroom of the forge instead.

"Can you just," he ventured to ask Astrid once, "can you maybe... _pretend_ not to hate me so much, at least?" Her response was to turn away, and she seemed to solve the problem by absenting herself from his presence so that at least he didn't have to see her disgusted, almost haunted expressions anymore.

Snotlout was absolutely outraged when he heard about the betrothal. He cornered Hiccup and demanded that he give up Astrid to him.

"I have no objection," Hiccup said readily. "Why don't you go propose to her and see what she says?"

The next time he saw Snotlout, his cousin had a sprained wrist and a black eye.

 _To be continued..._

Author's Notes: I got the idea for this story when I imagined Hiccup, like Valka, being a young parent kidnapped by a dragon who would later become his other half, and taken to the Sanctuary so that he missed most of his kids' childhood.

When I thought about circumstances that would allow Hiccup to even become a husband and father without Tooth's help in the first place, things...got interesting. Before he became a hero, no one would have wanted to marry him. The only person I could imagine marrying him anyway was Astrid, and only if she was doing it in order to achieve a personal goal. Basically, she would only want Hiccup in order to use him to help her become chief, but that would only happen if Stoick was dead, so I had to kill off him and Spitelout right at the beginning. Then, since I now had Hiccup & Astrid trapped together in a loveless marriage, I had to deal with all those issues before I could get to the heart of the story.

Basically, a lot of the pre-premise introduction would require me to write a lot of darker and even more sexual HiccStrid relationship than I'm used to. I didn't plan for this story to be one of my HiccStrid experiments, but it still works pretty well as one. ...I discovered while working on _Carried Off_ that I'm actually a lot more comfortable writing toxic HiccStrid than I am when I attempt to write positive HiccStrid. *sweatdrop*

At first, I tried to just summarize the state of Hiccup's marriage before the real story starts, but it ended up becoming a lot longer than I expected, and was also a ridiculous and horrible example of telling rather than showing, so I ended up going back and re-writing it all in real time.

This fic ended up being A LOT longer than I'd planned. The story was originally just supposed to be Hiccup's abduction and eventual reunion with his kids, but I had to write all this other stuff to get the tone of Hiccup's marriage right, give him some time with his babies before the dragon drama starts, what it was like for his kids to grow up without him, deal with the Red Death, etc.

The HiccStrid chapters DEMANDED to get written. So often, I'd get _attacked_ by ideas, scenes and dialogue and stuff, and often it would be at inconvenient times. One time, I had to sing aloud during an entire car trip to prevent getting flooded with ideas when I wouldn't be able to write them down. X'''D I feverishly drafted this fic in the hope that getting it _written_ would shut up my muse and hopefully leave me some time to get actual important stuff done.

 **A** **DreamWorks'** _ **How to Train Your Dragon**_ **fanfic by Raberba girl**

 **Chapter 2 (rough draft)**

Hiccup and Astrid both managed to survive the wedding ceremony, speaking their vows woodenly and avoiding eye contact. Astrid won the bride-running, not that that surprised anyone, and she did not stumble on the threshold. (What was more of a surprise was that Hiccup managed to not embarrass himself when it came to 'proving his virility.' The scar he struck into the wooden pillar wasn't exactly impressive, but it wasn't the worst anyone had ever seen, either.) Snotlout complained about having to serve drinks to the women as a result of the groom's party losing the race, but not for long, since he was shortly too drunk to care.

Indeed, most of the laughter and celebration that day seemed to revolve around the village's opportunity to drink and feast and forget about their troubles for a little while. No one paid much heed to the actual bridal couple, who were both honestly glad of the lack of attention. They picked at their food until someone finally remembered the whole point of the gathering, at which point Astrid was borne away to be made ready in the bedchamber she would inhabit as a wife.

"Please kill me now," Astrid muttered as her new husband entered the room, surrounded by ribald jokes and crude laughter. Hiccup didn't say a word, though his face flamed at the lewd suggestions the attendants were making. He couldn't bring himself to look at Astrid directly as he removed her bridal crown, and she kept her hands clenched into fists at her sides.

At last, the door closed, and the couple was left alone to consummate their marriage.

There was a very long pause. "We don't...actually have to go through with it," Hiccup finally muttered. "You can...you know...break it with - your fingers. Or something." He cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Or even...you don't even have to, I bet you could just cut your arm or something, all you need is a blood smear, right?"

Astrid clenched her teeth. She had actually considered that possibility, and was a little surprised that Hiccup was suggesting it independently. Unfortunately, she had concluded that it was probably best to keep this as legitimate as possible. If her ultimate goal was to be the chief of Berk, at least in truth if not actually in name, she would need all the legitimacy she could get.

"Let's just get this over with."

"Let's just- What?"

Astrid started literally ripping her dress off, too angry to care about the damaged seams and laces.

"Astrid?!"

"Help me with this," she snapped. "Or take your own clothes off, or something. Don't just stand there like an idiot."

"I- I- I-"

She rolled her eyes and gave up on him, managing to shed the dress on her own. She was more hesitant about her underclothes, and after a moment, she whirled to face him again. She found him gaping at her, without having made a single motion to remove any of his own clothes. Embarrassment surged through her, instantly turning to anger. "Get naked!" she ordered. "I want to see what I have to work with here."

His face turned bright red again. "I...I'm not-"

"I'm not expecting much, so don't worry about disappointing me."

He ducked his head so that she wouldn't see the anger in his expression, and awkwardly pulled off his tunic. After a long pause, he stole a glance at her, and found her staring at him with no expression. "You already knew I'm skinny," he muttered.

She did not say that she was surprised at his muscles. They were small, but very well defined, which she supposed made sense considering his trade. It wasn't quite attractive because his bones were too visible as well, but she did approve of the physical proof that he wasn't soft and lazy. "Keep going," she said shortly.

"Isn't it...your turn...?" he ventured, and immediately regretted it, as he'd known he would.

"My _turn_?" she snarled.

"..." She had to know what he meant, but apparently she was going to make him say it aloud anyway. "To...you know. Take something off."

"I never agreed to 'taking turns,'" she said coldly. "If you want any sex at all tonight, then finish getting naked, and _I'll_ decide how much more of my skin you're going to see."

"I'm fine with not having sex tonight."

She was shocked, and did not know how to respond for a minute. It hadn't occurred to her that he would willingly refrain even if she consented. It was difficult to hold her tongue until she was able to figure out what to say without stammering. "We have to. The marriage needs to be consummated."

" _I_ was never the one who was so keen on this marriage."

Her outrage felt suffocating. Then it occurred to her just in time to force the issue her way with something other than violence. She marched forward, ignoring the way he nervously backed away from her[. . .].

She had never touched someone in such a way before. It felt a little strange, but also gave her a steadying sense of power to see Hiccup responding to her touch. [. . .]

"A-Astrid-"

He was resisting her. She fought to get his pants off, struggling against the fastenings, the tightness, and his attempts to stop her. Of course she won in the end, but she didn't think it should have been so difficult.

He cringed, completely exposed, his face colored with shame, and the helpless look he gave her filled her with a gleeful, almost malicious sense of power. "You still fine with not having sex tonight?" she challenged.

He panted and whimpered.

She finished stripping him and pushed him to the bed. The fight seemed to have gone out of him until she climbed over him and was distracted trying to figure out the best way to position herself. That was when he snatched at her underclothes, trying to haul them off her body.

She shrieked, there was a struggle, a horrible moment when he was _holding her down_ , but eventually she managed to get on top again and pin him again. The problem was that he had succeeded in pulling off most of her clothes. She knelt over him, breathing hard and gripping his wrists tightly. She felt alarmingly exposed because he was staring at her [*censored because FFN is stupid*], and she couldn't stop him because if she let go of him long enough to cover herself, he would be able to fight his way free.

His eyes dragged slowly from her [*censored because FFN is stupid*] to her face, and he gave the smallest, most horribly smug little smile. "Fine. You can rape me, it's not like I can stop you. But I _am_ going to get something out of it, too."

"Men can't get raped," she snarled, furious at her own helplessness. "Not by women, anyway." She couldn't plunge into him and hurt him the way he could potentially do to her. She could hurt his vulnerable man-parts, except that it would have to be _after_ she used the thing to end her virginity and make her a chieftain's wife. It was infuriating the way he held so much power over her, no matter how physically helpless he was in her hands. "I hate you," she said acidly.

She hadn't expected that to hurt him, but it did. She could see it in his face.

"...Do what you need to do," he said quietly.

"Don't _move_."

"I won't," he sighed, and she was a little surprised when he continued to lie still after she cautiously released his arms. He even wiggled his hands a little where they still lay beside his head, as if to show off his obedience.

It was horribly, horribly awkward trying to figure out how exactly to crouch over him, realizing too late that she'd forgotten to prepare herself[. . .].

"Not...helping," he said through gritted teeth as she finally got over her revulsion to touch him. She was stubborn, at least until they fought and she won and tried to keep going and then he cried out in actual _pain_ and she saw tears in his eyes. "I can't DO this, Astrid!"

"You're a man, I'm a beautiful woman, of course we can do this," she shouted back, almost but not quite hysterically.

"You are _hurting_ me," he said furiously.

She glared at him but couldn't think what to say, because it was true and also because she was bewildered about why she was not the one hurting tonight like she was supposed to.

"Please," he begged, "please, let's just...try to get some sleep, we're just making it worse right now, we'll do better later..."

She let him, because there was nothing else to do.

Perhaps an hour or two later, she woke out of a doze and lay there in the dark for a long time, then carefully shifted to her other side and reached out. Gently, she stroked her fingertips down his spine and laid slow kisses against his back. She felt like her mind was detached from her body, watching numbly and calmly. It had occurred to her that honey attracts more flies than vinegar does, and touching his back was far less traumatizing than having to touch the other thing.

After a long time, his voice spoke, startling her because she thought he'd still been asleep. "Please stop."

"We need to have sex, Hiccup."

"I can't."

She slid closer to him until she was nearly spooning him, curling her arm over his shoulder and whispering in his ear. "Yes, you can." She laid a light kiss on the side of his face.

Slowly, he turned over to face her. Holding her gaze, he reached under the covers and slid his hands up her bare torso, gradually enough that she would have time to push him away if she chose. She didn't. [. . .] She squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to moan. He kept [*censored because FFN is stupid*].

"Do you want to lose your virginity tonight, or not?" he asked quietly.

She tried and failed to speak, panting, hoping that the noises she was making sounded affirmative enough.

"Then don't fight me."

At last, in the darkness, naked under the covers, she was able to take him into her. She froze.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry-"

"Stop that," she snapped. It was uncomfortable and _weird_ and invasive and undignified, but it didn't really hurt. Wasn't it supposed to hurt? Maybe if she moved-

Now he was the one moaning and grunting incoherently, and she soon joined him.

 _'Isn't it supposed to hurt?'_ her distracted mind kept thinking. As she grew used to the sensations, she found that they felt surprisingly good; she kind of liked having him fill her like this. But wasn't it supposed to hurt?! Everyone said it hurt the first time!

He [*censored because FFN is stupid*], and his whole body went limp. Since she caught herself trying to figure out if she had had an [*censored because FFN is stupid*] or not, she figured that she hadn't - she was under the impression that the experience was unmistakable.

But that wasn't important right now. She pushed him away and struggled to relight the lamp and then snapped at Hiccup, "Move!" as she pulled away the covers.

"It's cold," he complained.

"Shut up." She frowned and looked more closely, lowering the lamp in an effort to see better.

"What are you doing?" he sighed.

Her breath was starting to come in little gasps of panic. She couldn't find it. "I can't find it!"

He frowned, looked at where she was now practically clawing at the sheets, then reached out and took her hands to stop her. "It's probably just hard to see in the darkness. Let's go to sleep. We can look for it in the morning.

Morning came. Astrid literally shoved Hiccup out of the bed and tore the outer covers away. She searched frantically, but only found a single, very tiny spot of blood, negligible, not nearly enough for proof. "Where is it?!" she cried. There was no response, and then she jerked her head up to look at him. He was watching her, his expression unreadable. She straightened and snarled, "I _am_ a virgin, Hiccup." Well, obviously not anymore. "I came to you a virgin! I can take any oath that _I came to you a virgin_!"

He was reaching cautiously toward her now as if trying to calm a skittish horse. "Okay, okay, okay, I believe you," he said in a calming-a-skittish-horse voice.

"I'M A VIRGIN!" she insisted, panicking, and angry because she was panicking. Why hadn't she bled?!

"Yes, yes, Astrid, all right."

Belatedly, she finally heard what he was saying. "You believe me?!"

"For one thing, I know that you think every potential sexual partner on this island is disgusting, including myself, so I would be _really_ surprised if you'd slept with any of those muttonheads by choice. I also know that you can take care of yourself, and that no man who tried to take advantage of you would have stood a chance."

"Darn right," she muttered.

"For another thing, I don't actually care whether I married a virgin or not, Astrid."

She practically hissed at him.

"I don't," he said firmly. "If I ever got to marry anyone, at the very least, I'd have wanted it to be to someone who respects me. But the wife I ended up with hates my guts, and that really sucks, so honestly, the state of your hymen is pretty low on my list of concerns right now."

"If you ever _dare_ breathe a word about my unsuitability as a chieftain's wife-"

"I won't stand in your way, Astrid," he said shortly. "If you want Berk, just take it. It's not like I have any chance of stopping you."

Turning away from him, she found her knife and shed what she hoped was the right amount of blood onto the sheet she'd been lying on, about where her pelvis would have been when they had sex.

"Can I please go back to bed now?" Hiccup said wearily.

When the witnesses returned later that morning, Astrid was fully dressed and Hiccup was just pulling his tunic over his head. Neither of them said anything as they were congratulated and teased, and Astrid stayed tense until the bridal sheet bearing the proof of her purity was put away without anyone seeming to notice that there was anything wrong with it.

As soon as she could get her mother alone (which took a few hours, since people were paying more attention to the bridal couple now that they'd consummated their marriage and were even more fun to tease), she said frantically, "Mom! Mom, I don't know what happened, I'm a virgin, I _swear_ I was a virgin before the wedding, but we had sex and _I couldn't find any blood_ , and it didn't hurt and...and, Mom, wasn't my hymen supposed to break?!"

"I thought there _was_ blood," Mrs. Hofferson said in bewilderment. Then her eyes widened in understanding when she saw her daughter's pained look and the new bandage she wore. "Ah... How much does Hiccup know?"

"He knows it all," Astrid said shortly. "He doesn't care. But, Mom, what _happened_? It felt weird but it didn't really hurt, and I looked _all over_ that sheet but there wasn't even enough blood to-"

"Astrid, you're absolutely positive that- Well, yes I suppose so."

" _What_ , Mom?!"

"What I mean to say is, I forgot to tell you this before, I didn't realize it would be important compared to the other things, but... Astrid, it does happen every so often. Sometimes a woman's maidenhead is lost in all innocence. Tell me, do you ever remember a time, perhaps when you were training or during a raid, that you might have felt pain, and found a bit of blood in your leggings afterward?"

"N-o-o-o," Astrid started to say uncertainly, but then paused. She thought for a while. "Well...I don't remember it hurting, but I _do_ remember one time, I thought... Oh." She could suddenly imagine it, the thin flesh jarred a bit too harshly during that fall, tearing inside her without needing a man's help at all. "Oh... Really?"

"It's not all that uncommon, especially here on the front lines of the war. I'm sorry, Astrid, I wish I'd thought to tell you. I'm glad that Hiccup hasn't made a fuss about it."

"I can handle him. Thanks, Mom," Astrid said, hugging her.

"Are you all right, Astrid?" her mother asked softly. "How was he with you?"

"He was..." _'Pathetic, awkward. ...Big.'_ "I'm fine, Mom."

"Really?"

"Really, Mom. Come on, it's _Hiccup_." What she did not say was that the experience had not been completely unpleasant, and that far from her original plan of claiming legitimacy and _perhaps_ an heir or two and then refusing to let her husband touch her otherwise, she might actually even try it again, just for fun.

 _To be continued..._

Author's Notes: I had been about to write a "Astrid feels a sharp pain during her first time" scene like everyone else does, when it suddenly occurred to me that she is a very active girl and has probably broken her hymen already. I also figured that this probably happens fairly often to Berk women, most of whom seem to be warriors and would also be physically active.

But then after I posted this chapter, I found a Web page ( 201172815/7-things-you-didnt-know-about-hymen ) that made me realize that I apparently wrote about hymens totally wrong...except that I can't find any other sources to support the information they claim. Sooo...yeah, I don't entirely know what I'm talking about, but I do know that first-time pain is common but not universal.

 **A** **DreamWorks'** _ **How to Train Your Dragon**_ **fanfic by Raberba girl**

 **Chapter 3 (rough draft)**

They did try it again, that very same night. They went silently to the bedroom, closed themselves in, and eyed each other for a minute. Then he made an apprehensive sort of sigh and slowly got undressed. She watched him, not even sure how to describe what she was feeling.

After he'd stood there silent and naked for a minute, he raised his head, blushing resentfully. He held out his arms as if scornfully offering himself for inspection. "You still in the mood, or should I just put my clothes back on?"

She snorted to cover the fact that she wasn't actually sure how to answer that, and started getting undressed herself. She paused when she saw him staring at her. "...Turn around," she ordered.

"What?"

" _Turn around_. I'm not going to get naked in front of you."

"What- Astrid, I'm your _husband_!"

"It doesn't matter," she said forcefully. "If I don't want you to see me, then you're not going to see me. Turn around, or we'll just call it off and go straight to sleep."

" _Fine_."

To her shock, he started _putting his clothes back on again_ , very quickly and purposefully as if he actually meant it. "Hiccup!"

"Why should I put myself on the line for you if you'll do _nothing_ for me in return?" he demanded. "I can live without sex. I'd _rather_ just sleep than be humiliated by my own wife."

"Wh...What is _wrong_ with you?! I thought men were supposed to be pigs!"

"In case you hadn't noticed, Astrid," he said bitterly, "I am not like most men, and _everything_ is wrong with me."

She watched, seething and incredulous, as he climbed into bed, wrapped the covers over himself, and turned his back to her, looking for all the world as if he intended to go straight to sleep. Meanwhile, her insides felt empty empty empty, throbbing and frustrated.

She gritted her teeth and climbed onto her side of the bed, but crawled over to him and started trying to unfasten his pants under the covers.

" _Astrid_!"

"I want sex," she said shortly.

"And I want to see you naked, but neither of us are going to get what we want," he shot back.

"You wanna see me naked?!" She suddenly hauled off her dress[. . .].

She jerked the covers tightly over herself, covering every bit of her nakedness. They lay there for a while, panting and glaring fiercely at each other.

"...Come on," she finally said, moving closer. [. . .] She pulled down his pants, more gently this time, and after a moment of hesitation, she tugged his hands [*censored because FFN is stupid*].

They made love without speaking and without any particular joy, then lay there for a while watching each other. Hiccup, who hadn't been given a chance to remove most of his clothes during sex, now struggled out of them and shoved them to the floor, because the drying sweat and other stains made them uncomfortable. He looked like there were many things he wanted to say or ask, but he said nothing. Finally he sighed, turned away from her, and eventually fell asleep. She touched her fingertips to the freckles on his back, one after another after another, until the lamp finally ran out of fuel and went out.

o.o.o.o.o

Each time they had sex during the wedding feast, it got easier and easier, and Astrid eventually grew comfortable with disrobing in front of Hiccup. She rather liked the awed look on his face and the reverent way he laid his hands on her, and she refused to acknowledge the guilt in the back of her heart that she had so fiercely denied him this until now. It didn't feel embarrassing to be naked with him anymore, and though he'd never have the sort of body she could admire, she came to feel comfortable with the familiarity of his narrow shoulders and lean, defined muscles, and even with the less appealing defined bones. He wasn't beautiful, but he no longer repulsed her, either.

The trouble started after the wedding feast was over. Now that it was back to normal life, and they had more to do than just party during the day and make love at night, the difficulties of being trapped in marriage to each other started to become worse.

Hiccup had been named the chief of Berk. There was some grumbling, but no one outright protested, and it was generally accepted that that was because of the beautiful, intelligent warrior at his side, just as Astrid had planned.

She went everywhere with Hiccup at first. She gave her opinion, sometimes rather forcefully, on almost every issue, until she was gratified one day to see people looking to her first rather than to Hiccup.

Hiccup gradually stopped bothering to hold up the pretense that he was in charge, and sometimes, when Astrid was caught up in settling a dispute or lending a hand, he'd slip away and wander about on his own.

Snotlout came across him one time and laughed. "Where's your wife, _Chief_? Too busy doing your job for you to pay you any attention?"

"Pretty much, yeah," Hiccup muttered.

"I always knew you'd never be the one wearing the pants, no matter who you married. If it were me, I'd _never_ let a woman walk all over me like that, I'd show her who was boss!"

"I'm sure you would, Snotlout."

"Are you even _capable_ of keeping her happy in bed? Hah! Whenever her eye starts wandering, I'll be right here, ready and waiting to satisfy all her needs!"

Hiccup said nothing and tried to move away.

Snotlout seized his shoulder and dragged him back. "Oh no, I'm not done talking to you, cuz."

"Don't you have a baby yak or a small child to terrorize?"

"I think you qualify as both," Snotlout snickered.

An axe handle came swinging out of nowhere to crash against Snotlout's helmet, and he staggered away and fell to his knees, dazed from the force of the blow.

"I don't like it when people mess with things that belong to me, Snotlout," Astrid said coldly, looming over him.

"A...Aaassstrid..."

"Get out of here. Sven needs help, I told him you'd be there."

"Sveeen...Aaassstrid..."

Astrid jerked the burly young man to his feet and gave him a hard shove in the right direction. Then she turned to her husband and raised an eyebrow. "You all right?"

"Yeah," he muttered. There was a long pause.

"You're welcome," she prompted irritably.

"For what?"

"He _insulted_ you. You just stood there and did nothing about it, _as usual_ , so I saved your honor. And mine, too, while I was at it. You're my husband now - if someone disrespects you, it reflects badly on _me_."

"All I heard was you talking about me like I'm a piece of property instead of a person," Hiccup said. His voice was calm, almost easygoing, and she didn't know him well enough yet to recognize the resentment in his eyes. "I'm a person, you know. Not a 'thing.' How come you couldn't have stood up for me back before we got married, Astrid?"

"Because we weren't married then," she said, as if it was obvious. "Come on, we're wasting time. You need to quit wandering off like this, it looks bad when I can't keep track of you."

"Yes, it would be terrible if you lost any of your possessions," he muttered as he followed her.

One morning, Astrid woke up to find that she was the only person in the house. Surprised and displeased with this unexpected development, she pulled on some clothes and hurried to the Great Hall and then to the forge, where she was relieved to find Hiccup. None of the relief showed; her voice was gruff as she demanded, "What are you doing here?"

"Gobber gave me my old job back," he said shortly, his eyes fixed on his work. "I'm useless everywhere else, so I might as well just keep smithing, since it's apparently the only thing I'm good for."

"Oh." Astrid relaxed, liking the idea of Hiccup being a blacksmith again. He'd be out of her hair, and might even be useful tucked away back here. "All right, sounds good."

He jerked his head up and stared at her, hurt and resentment clear on his face. She didn't notice it, because she'd already turned away and was marching back to the Hall to get some breakfast, already making plans in her head for all the chiefly duties she'd need to attend to that day.

o.o.o.o.o

It was so nice, getting to do things exactly the way she wanted. A few people gave her some trouble over the fact that she was making leadership decisions in Hiccup's absence, but it usually didn't take much to keep them in line.

By the end of the day, Astrid was exhausted but happy, and she got home late. The central fire was very low, but the loft was glowing with light, and she could hear the quiet sounds of Hiccup's presence. "Hiccup? I'm home."

"I know," he called back.

She rolled her eyes. "Have you eaten yet?"

"Yeah."

"Me too. Come down and let's get the accounts over with."

There was a long pause, then the scrape of chair legs across the floor and creaking as Hiccup crossed the room and descended the stairs. Astrid laid out all the books and documents across the table, record-keeping both for village matters and for their personal household. She was capable of doing it all herself, but the work went a lot faster and easier with two people, and a small part of her grudgingly admitted that the de jure chieftain ought to be in the loop along with the de facto chieftain. Besides, Hiccup seemed to be developing a healthier sense of resource-stockpiling now that he was actually _seeing_ the numbers with his own eyes.

"The haul was good today," Astrid remarked, "we were able to start preserving quickly. We have to figure out how to hide them well enough during raids that the dragons can't find them."

"Even if every scrap of it makes it to winter intact, we'll only have enough to get us through January, and that's with stage 3 rations..."

"It's not like that's our _only_ stash, Hiccup. I just said it was a good one."

"Tell that to future-us in February."

Once that nightly routine was done, it was time for the other nightly routine. They closed all the books, stacked the papers, put everything away, and then Astrid tugged her husband close and drew him into a rough kiss. Usually he would respond by sliding his hands inside her clothes, but tonight he just laid his hands on her waist, above her clothing, and squeezed gently.

She broke away from his lips, whispered "Come on," and nipped at his neck.

"Ow."

She frowned in displeasure at the slight break in the mood. Usually he'd play along. "Come on," she said, this time more businesslike.

"I have an idea," he said as she pushed him down onto their marriage bed. "Why don't we flip a coin to see who gets to be on top tonight."

"I want to be on top," she said matter-of-factly as she worked to peel off his clothing.

"I know you do," he said with strained patience as he let himself be peeled, "but I kind of want to be, too."

"You know I'd end up on top no matter how we start out."

"...True."

"So it makes sense that I should just get my way at the beginning, right?"

She said it almost teasingly, the promise of sex putting her in a better-than-usual mood, and she didn't notice the closed look to his face as he said dryly, "Of course. Makes perfect sense."

She made love to him, and was impatient because he kept just lying there, and wouldn't pleasure her unless she spoon-fed him instructions that he should have already learned. " _Harder_ , Hiccup! Freyja help me, it's like you've never done this before- GAH! Not that hard! What is wrong with you?!"

"Sorry." He did not sound repentant. Astrid narrowed her eyes, and he sucked gently until she was appeased. Then he fumbled again, so awkwardly that she couldn't help feeling like he'd done it on purpose. "You are COMPLETELY OFF YOUR GAME TONIGHT, Hiccup!"

"Yeah, it's me, the problem is always with me," he said amiably. If she was capable of thinking of anything other than sex at the moment, she would have wondered why he sounded sarcastic.

All in all, she got her pleasure in the end, but it had been an atypically irritating workout to get that far. Astrid wanted to complain, but before she could get in the mood to nag at Hiccup again, he had already gotten out of bed, gathered up his clothes, and walked out.

He did that every single night. No matter how good or bad the sex was, he never slept in his supposed marriage bed. The master bedroom might belong to both the husband and wife in theory, but in practice, it was Astrid's room. Hiccup performed his marital duties and then would retreat back to the loft, which he still, even in his married life, used as a bedroom and workroom.

That started to annoy Astrid more and more, until she figured out that it was because it seemed so immature of him. The loft was his childhood room, but he wasn't a child anymore. He was a full-grown adult, a married man. He shouldn't be hiding up there when he had a wife and new responsibilities to tend to.

That's why she decided to give him that last push into growing up. She was the lady of the house now, she had the keys and the authority that went with them, this was her domain. So she set aside one afternoon to clean up the loft: she went through Hiccup's personal possessions, sorting them into useless things to be thrown away, things to be packed up and put in storage, and things to be brought downstairs and integrated into the household at large. She was just finishing up when Hiccup came home from work.

"What are you DOING?!"

"Some housecleaning," she said shortly, snapping shut the lock on a full chest.

"This is MY STUFF! You have no right to-!"

"I'M YOUR WIFE!" she bellowed at him. "I have _every_ right!"

He was ignoring her, trying to scoop up items from the 'garbage' pile and hold them protectively close.

"I _guess_ I can pack those up until you're ready to throw them away, but-"

"GET OUT OF MY ROOM." He didn't quite yell it, but the intensity of his voice and the fury of his expression were enough to shock her. She realized that she didn't remember having ever seen Hiccup truly angry before.

It scared her, just a tiny bit, so she took a deep breath and summoned up her own anger and pushed back. "THIS IS NOT YOUR ROOM ANYMORE."

They faced each other down, seething and trembling with rage.

Then Hiccup abruptly turned away. "I'm sleeping at Gobber's tonight," he announced, and started down the stairs.

"You can't leave yet!" she yelled, only dimly aware that she was gripping her weapon in her fist as if she'd intended to attack her own husband with it. "We still have the accounts, we've still got-"

" _You're_ the chief!" he yelled back. " _You_ deal with it! You don't need me!" The front door slammed shut.

The open acknowledgement of her long-coveted role pleased Astrid so much that her feet wouldn't move to go after him until it was too late - she didn't want to look pathetic by having to chase after her husband, instead of catching him at the threshold as she should have.

She shook her head, made a simple meal (pretty much anything more complicated than warming up leftovers was beyond her culinary skills), and sat down with the account books. She wouldn't admit to herself that it was a much longer and more tedious task without Hiccup's help.

When she was finally finished, she sighed, put everything away, and went to look for her husband. She found Gobber and Hiccup sitting around the fire in Gobber's house, chatting. Hiccup's face instantly hardened when he saw her at the door.

"You coming home, Hiccup?" she asked, meaning, _"Come back long enough for sex, then you can do whatever you want."_

"No," he said coolly, knowing exactly what her unspoken question was. "I was just about to go to sleep." He gestured at a pallet on the floor. Gobber watched the couple, frowning.

Astrid didn't know how to react at first. Her husband was openly defying her, he was going to _refuse_ , she'd have to go to sleep tonight empty. Even if she pleasured herself, it wasn't the same thing. _'...He's sulking, like a bratty little boy,'_ she thought, then remembered him calling her 'chief.' _'Fine. I can be magnanimous. Let him sulk; he'll sleep on it and feel better in the morning.'_ "I guess I'll see you tomorrow then," she snapped, and went home.

"...Everything all right, lad?" Gobber asked after a moment.

"Everything's fine, Gobber!" Hiccup said brightly. "I mean, sure, my dad died, and my wife hates me, and she just _destroyed everything I own_ , but, hey, other than that, it's all great!" He leveled a warning look at his mentor. "GREAT, Gobber. It's all wonderful."

"I see," Gobber said sadly. "Better get some sleep, I suppose."

"Yup. G'night, Gobber!"

"Good night, lad..."

 _To be continued..._


	2. Chapters 4-5

**A** **DreamWorks'** _ **How to Train Your Dragon**_ **fanfic by Raberba girl Chapter 4 (rough draft)**

 **A/N: Warning for brief crude language in this chapter, as well as spousal abuse.**

o.o.o

Hiccup and Astrid didn't see each other all the next day except in passing or at a distance. That night, Astrid rushed him through his meal and told him they'd catch up on the accounts later. "Come on," she said, pulling him urgently toward the bedroom.

"No, Astrid."

"What do you mean, 'no'?" she stormed.

"I mean I don't want to sleep with you tonight."

"You're a married man, you don't have a choice," she said hotly. She was kind of starting to hate the way sex made her so desperate, as if it controlled her. She also couldn't understand why Hiccup, who was the man for Thor's sake, seemed to be able to do without sex more easily than she could. It was the opposite of what she'd heard all her life.

"What do you mean I don't have a choice?!" he exploded. "I _don't want to have sex with you_ , Astrid! I'm your husband, don't I get a say in when we make love and when we don't?! I just want to go to Gobber's and go to _sleep_ , I don't-"

He was resisting so much, trying to yank his arms out of her hands and dragging his feet and jerking away, she finally lost patience and punched him in the face. He went limp for a minute, and she was able to haul him a few more steps, but then he started struggling again, straining away from her.

"What is _wrong_ with you?!" she cried in exasperation. She hit him again to weaken him, guiltily ignoring the blood dripping down his face, then hauled him over her shoulders to carry him more easily.

"Let go of me," he sobbed.

"It's sex!" she yelled. "You're supposed to _enjoy_ it! Why the hell are you fighting me?! Why do I always have to do all the work in this relationship?!"

"I hate you!" he screamed like a child, _still struggling_. "Let me _go_!"

"Stop that, I'm going to drop you!"

"Don't you have _any_ respect for me at all?! Not even as your husband, but as a _human being_?!"

"As far as I'm concerned, you are nothing but your dick," she snarled. "Men think with their dicks anyway, you should _like_ that I want to make love to you every night."

" _This_ isn't love," cried. _"This_ \- is - _not_ \- _love_."

He was trying to strike her in an attempt to free himself, so she slammed him as hard as she could against the wall, taking advantage of his sudden stillness to shift her grip. Now she held both his legs and one arm captive, and he wasn't strong enough to hurt her with the other arm from this angle.

She staggered and nearly dropped him when he managed to catch hold of the doorframe with his free hand. "Let go, Hiccup!"

"Put me down," he said, sounding winded.

It was hard to hit him effectively at this angle, so she dug her thumb savagely into the inside of his thigh until he gasped with pain.

"Let go," she ordered.

"Put me down," he choked out, writhing as she pressed even harder. The pain against the tender flesh of his inner thigh was excruciating, even through a layer of clothing.

"Let go, or I _will_ put you down - so that it will be easier to knock your teeth out."

Slowly, his grip weakened enough for her to tug him the rest of the way loose and enter the room with him. "I hate you," he whimpered, "I hate you, I hate you _so much_..."

Once she had him on the bed and naked, she realized that she had not taken into account the possibility that he wouldn't be able to perform when he was in such a traumatized state. She ended up pretty much having to [*censored because FFN is stupid*] there in the same bed with her husband, as he glared balefully at her the whole time. "Are you finished now?" he asked coldly.

She glared back as she panted. "We could have avoided all this-" She paused and reached to wipe some blood away from his face, but he jerked his head away. "We could have avoided this," she growled, "if you'd just done your duty to me in the first place without a fuss."

"And what about _your_ duty to _me_?" he said hotly. "Where in the handbook for marriage does it say it's okay for a wife to beat her husband and ignore his wishes and disrespect him and try to force him to have sex when he doesn't want to?"

"There is no 'handbook for marriage,'" she snorted, willfully ignoring the fact that there _were_ traditions, and things everyone knew or took for granted, and...stuff that she really didn't want to think about.

"Can I go now?" he asked bitterly. "Now that I've failed you in every possible way, can I just go now? Or do you have a whip stashed around here that you need to use on me first?"

"Get out!" she yelled. "I can't stand you! I wish I'd never married you!"

"SAME HERE!"

Before she could retort, he'd stormed away.

o.o.o.o.o

Hiccup slept on the floor of the forge that night, not wanting his mentor to see him. Then, before dawn, he disappeared into the forest, and didn't reappear again until after sundown when he was too hungry to keep hiding. He wasn't equipped for hunting (he was lousy at it, anyway), and foraging hadn't gotten him far, so he was hoping to be able to throw together a quick meal before Astrid came home, then escape to the shadows of the forge again.

No such luck. She came in when he was only halfway done. They froze, staring at each other.

"...Where have you _been_?" she finally demanded, shakily trying to ignore the bruises on his face. She hadn't realized they'd be that bad.

"None of your business."

"You weren't in the forge, we _need_ you to help out Gobber and keep a backlog from piling up-"

"Fine, I'll go do some makeup work right now," he said, abandoning his unfinished meal and making his way toward the back door, since she was blocking the front.

"Wait, Hiccup."

"No, I-"

" _Wait_ ," she said harshly. "Be a husband to me first, and then you can go."

"No!" he burst out. "No, I-"

She lunged for him. He ran, she caught him, she hauled him over her shoulders, and he knew better than to fight this time. The heavy bruise on his thigh throbbed when her hand simply brushed against it. He was silent, trying hard to keep from crying as she carried him to the bed and dropped him onto it. He managed to say, "I don't want to do this. I don't want to sleep with you. I don't want to, Astrid."

"Hush," she said, and started to strip off her clothes. She had learned that it was easier to get a reaction out of him if she was naked, and instead of the selfish violence of the previous night, she took care to touch him gently and reward him. The result was that she was able to get him hard this time, and she sank down onto him with a groan of relief and pleasure.

Her euphoria soon diminished when he lay passively, gripping the sheets to keep his hands off her and ignoring every instruction she gave him. " _Touch_ me, Hiccup," she demanded.

"No."

"What's wrong with you?! _Do_ something, don't just lie there like a dead fish!"

"Why? As far as you're concerned, I'm nothing but my dick, right? Which you are in complete possession of right now, so you should be all set."

Anger was not doing good things to her libido. She softened her voice. "Hiccup~" She touched him and kissed him. He gasped and moaned (she didn't realize that a few of the sounds he made were from pain when she agitated his injuries too much), but his fingers remained stubbornly gripping the sheets, and after she'd drawn her tongue back out of his mouth, he clamped his jaws shut whenever any part of her body, including her hair, came anywhere near his face. "Hiccup. Make love to me."

"No," he whispered. "No. No. Take your pleasure, but I will give you _none_."

She tightened her jaw and gave up, businesslike as she finished the sex. They stared at each other for a while, panting. Then he said, "I suppose as rapes go, that wasn't as horrible as it could have been."

"Will you stop that?" she snapped. "Men can't get raped, you know that."

"Well, then I guess I'm not a man," he stormed, "because you _did_ just rape me, Astrid. You forced me into sex against my will, you violated me, you dishonored me - if any man had done that to any woman, you would be the first to cry rape and see that justice gets done. But I guess when it happens to me, it doesn't count because...why? Because I'm too pathetic to be a real man? Or because you're the real chief of this godforsaken island and can do whatever the hell you want to anyone you want? Or is it just because I'm such a piece of garbage that I don't deserve to have any rights at all? I might as well be a thrall, I'm worth nothing more than a bed-slave to you, maybe you should just ship me off to a tribe where slavery's legal, I'm sure the Lava-Louts would treat me better than you do!"

She might have felt more guilty if he wasn't _crying_ again, which had the effect of evaporating any softening feelings toward him. She wanted to strangle him. She would have wondered if he was somehow a woman hidden inside a male body, except that that would be an insult to her own sex. He wasn't 'womanly,' because all the women she knew were strong and worthy of at least a grudging level of respect. This creature before her wasn't 'womanly,' he was just _Hiccup_ , of course he'd be crazy and defective and unsatisfactory.

"You're being ridiculous. We have sex because we're married, that's all there is to it." She gazed at him in disdain as he slowly regained his composure. She wondered, as she watched him wiping at his face until he stopped crying, how she had ended up in this mess, and why things had been set up to be so impossible. Why couldn't she have just been allowed to be chief without all this fuss and bother?

Hiccup finally asked in a low voice, "Can I go now?"

"Get out," she snapped. She pulled the sheets over her and turned her back to him, but didn't hear him pause as he got dressed and left the room.

The next morning, Gobber came yawning into the forge and was surprised to find his apprentice already hard at work. "Hiccup! You're early. Making up for that no-show yesterday?"

Hiccup grunted.

"Well... I see you've made a good start, so I'll just...get busy then, eh?"

"Mm."

The morning passed as usual, until a few hours later when Gobber had his hands full at the same time a customer came up to the counter. "See to it, will you, Hiccup?" the master smith called.

There was no response, and no break in the sound of hammering on the other side of the room.

"HICCUP!"

"I'm busy," the young man said shortly.

"I'm busy, too! And I'm your boss, so I'm telling _you_ to go see what Gunnar needs!"

"And I am flagrantly disobeying your orders."

It never even occurred to Hiccup to try to pull rank, nor to Gobber that Hiccup was _technically_ the chief.

"Should I come back later?" Gunnar asked.

"Ach!" Cursing in frustration, Gobber interrupted his work and stomped over to the counter. "What do you want, Gunnar?"

"Just wanted to buy some nails."

Once the man had left, Gobber stormed over to his apprentice. "Do we need to have a talk, boy?"

"..."

Gobber, too impatient to consider the dangers of forcefully touching a man who had hot iron in his hands, grabbed Hiccup's shoulder and jerked him around to face him.

Then he gasped. "Hiccup!"

Hiccup stared sullenly at his boots.

Gobber gently used his arm prosthetic to tip the young man's chin back up. He helplessly inspected the large bruises blooming over Hiccup's face and the cut on the corner of his mouth. "What happened to you, lad?!"

"I fell," Hiccup said tonelessly.

"You fell."

"..."

"...Did Astrid do this to you?" Gobber asked, very softly.

Hiccup said nothing, but he clenched his teeth and his eyes glistened slightly.

"...Go on to the back and work on the accounts," Gobber murmured, his hand on Hiccup's shoulder relaxing into a comforting pat. "It's been piling up and you know I've got no head for figures, I won't be surprised if it takes you all day to sort it all out."

Hiccup quickly wiped his sleeve across his face and disappeared into the back room.

He didn't come out again until after sunset, when Astrid came to fetch her husband. Gobber stopped her at the front of the shop and said quietly, "Think carefully about what you're doing, lass."

"What are you talking about?"

"Hiccup is like a son to me. He's all I have left of my best friend. I don't like seeing him hurt."

"What do you mean he's hurt? Did he do something idiotic again and get himself burned or something?"

Gobber gave her a look that, after a while, started to make her squirm. "He...did he...say anything...?"

"He didn't have to," Gobber said shortly.

Astrid crossed the room and pushed aside the curtain to the back. She caught a glimpse of Hiccup, sitting unmoving at the desk with his face buried in his arms, surrounded by tidy stacks of paperwork. Then he was up and raging at her, cursing at her, shoving her out of the workroom and slamming the curtain shut as if it was a door.

Astrid stared, outraged, but also guilty. She'd forgotten how bad they were, the horrible bruises she had put on her husband's face, and now Gobber had seen them. Gobber knew what she had done, and she felt more ashamed now than she had when it had only been a matter between herself and Hiccup. "I..."

She trudged through the shop and stopped close to Gobber. "I...I didn't know- He's so FRAGILE!" she burst out. Then, as always, her guilt turned to anger. "What is wrong with him?! Why is he so _weak_?! Snotlout or the twins or Fishlegs could have handled it just fine, but you just _touch_ Hiccup and his bones break, how in the world has he even survived this long?!"

"I think it'd be best if you went along home, Astrid," Gobber said tightly.

"What?"

"You need to go."

"..."

"Astrid. Did you love Stoick?"

"What-? Of course I did! He was the best chieftain we could have ever had!"

"How do you think he would feel if he could see the way you've been treating his son?" Gobber said quietly.

After a long moment, Astrid left without a word.

Hiccup spent that night on the pallet on Gobber's floor. Astrid spent it alone in her vast, empty bed.

 _To be continued..._

Author's Notes: Men _can_ get physically and sexually abused by women. It doesn't happen as often as the other way around, but it does happen, and it's not rare, either. (One reason the statistics are lower is because fewer male victims report the crimes than female victims do.)

 **A** **DreamWorks'** _ **How to Train Your Dragon**_ **fanfic by Raberba girl**

 **Chapter 5 (rough draft)**

The next evening, Astrid dragged Hiccup out of the back room of the forge and started hauling him toward their house.

"Wait, Astrid, wait, Astrid _please_ , Astrid-"

"I'm not going to hurt you," she snapped. "I won't hit you, and I won't...I won't 'rape' you, okay? I promise. I just want to show you something, that's all."

He still protested, though he didn't struggle quite as much. She managed to get him into the house and, to his surprise, up the stairs to the loft. Then he just stood there, staring.

"...I didn't know where all your stuff used to be," she uncomfortably. "I just did the best I could, and I figure you can fix it however you like it."

Hiccup slowly moved to his old desk, touching one of the papers that had been pinned to the slab of cork on the wall. He looked around at his work and his possessions, which had been unpacked and more or less replaced.

"I think it's ridiculous, you living up here when you're a married man now," Astrid continued in an irritated tone, "but whatever; if it makes you happy, you can have it. You can _have_ it, Hiccup. I won't touch anything in here, you can hide in here, you can...I don't know...I don't care anymore. You can be a childish brat in here, okay? I don't care. I give up, it's not worth it, I shouldn't have expected any better of you. So no more complaints. _Okay_ , Hiccup?"

He turned and gave her an appraising look, for so long that she had to make a conscious effort to stop from squirming uncomfortably. Then he said, "Let's go down to the bedroom."

"What?"

"To have sex. We're married, so we're supposed to have sex, right?"

"Wh... _What_?!"

He took her hand and led her down, and he didn't smile - not once during the whole hour and a half that followed - but his hands and his tongue were all over her, and he blew her mind so often and so thoroughly that she was exhausted afterward, panting, feeling dazed and full and completely satisfied and _happy_.

He sat beside her, gazing down at her, looking like a man who has just purchased an unpleasant but necessary item.

Slowly, she realized what was happening. "This is how it's going to be, huh," she murmured. She loved sex - no, she _desperately needed_ sex - and for whatever reason, he could apparently live without it. Perhaps this was some divinely-granted thing to make up for the fact that she was physically so much stronger than her husband. She understood the game now, that she couldn't just steamroll over Hiccup whenever she wanted, because if she did something he really didn't like, it was going to be the 'rape' routine or, if her conscience bothered her enough, no sex at all. If she pleased him, he would reward her with _this_. He had learned how to use sex as a tool and a weapon.

"I hate you," she murmured, absently trailing her fingertips over his skin.

"Likewise," he returned calmly.

She sighed. "Truce?"

"I'll play nice as long as you will."

"Okay."

"Good night."

"What?"

He got up and left the room. She heard him ascend the stairs to the loft.

"...Good night," she whispered.

o.o.o.o.o

Hiccup couldn't hide in the back room of the forge forever, and soon the whole village knew that someone had beaten him up. Most people also guessed right about who had done the beating.

"Man, you've hit a new low of pathetic, even for _you_ ," Snotlout scoffed at one point, and probably the worst thing was that he sounded almost pitying when he said it.

Hiccup avoided the Great Hall as much as possible, left all the shopping to Astrid, and spent as much time as he could in the forge, his house, or the woods. It didn't eliminate the mockery expressed by almost every man and some of the women in the village, but at least he was able to minimize having to hear it.

Astrid was not unaffected, either. One afternoon, she was trying to settle a dispute between two herders and said impatiently, "It's a perfectly reasonable compromise. Don't make me bash you two over the head just to make you see sense."

"Oooh, wouldn't want that," one of the men snickered. "You're an expert at bashing men, eh, _Astrid_?"

It disturbed her for a couple of reasons. First of all, because he'd neglected to call her 'Chief,' as many of the villagers had taken to doing by now, and also because it wasn't good-natured teasing - he sounded like he was mocking _her_ along with Hiccup.

"You know what," she snapped, "since you two can't come to an agreement, I think I'll just confiscate the cattle in question and consider them tributes to the chieftain."

"What?!"

"Hey, you can't do that!"

"I JUST DID."

Shortly after that, Astrid dropped off one of her swords to be sharpened at the forge. After she had left, Hiccup stood there for a while slowly turning the weapon in his hands. He wasn't particularly angry at his wife for anything at the moment, but the general hopelessness and endless misery of his life were weighing heavily on him, and he wanted to hide for a while. He got the sword ready to be decorated, then took it aside and began engraving patterns on it, losing himself in the lengthy, meticulous work, letting his mind drift away on the soothing tides of art.

He worked steadily, with very few breaks. Whenever Astrid came by to ask about her sword, he told her brusquely that he was working on a surprise for her and she would have to make do with a different weapon in the meantime. He didn't go home in the evenings, despite Astrid coming by to get him. To show that he wasn't punishing her for anything, he always pulled her into the back room for heavy makeout sessions and quick couplings, but he would spend his nights in the forge, sleeping on the floor for a few hours and working whenever the insomnia pulled him back to consciousness again.

o.o.o.o.o

When the sword was finally finished, exhaustion seemed to crash down on Hiccup all at once. He sat for a long time, staring at his work, allowing his thoughts to get lost in the patterns. Then he felt a touch on his shoulder and heard his wife say, with something that sounded suspiciously like awe, "Hiccup...this is beautiful."

He looked up at her, but didn't move and couldn't think of anything to say.

She picked up the sword in both hands and inspected it closely, the smile growing on her face. "This is a weapon fit for a chieftain. This is _gorgeous_ , Hiccup."

"Mm-hm." He wasn't about to point out all the mistakes he'd made. There wasn't much call for weapons ornamentation in the dragon-plagued, war-torn Barbaric Archipelago, so he wasn't exactly a master in that branch of the craft - but then again, all the other tribes also had better things to do than waste time fancying up their blades, so there was probably no more than a handful of Vikings in the whole Archipelago who could have done better. Astrid didn't seem to notice any of the flaws, anyway.

Her smile faded to a puzzled frown, and she looked back at him. "Why did you do this?"

He couldn't say that he'd done it because he'd needed to escape from the world for a while, so he just shrugged.

"Did you... Is this a - a gift for me?"

"Yes," he lied. He didn't care what happened to the sword. He couldn't lose himself in decorating it anymore, so it was useless to him now.

He was surprised at the expression that spread across her face. It was almost...tender. "Thank you, Hiccup," she whispered.

"You're welcome," he said automatically. He looked past her and realized that it was nighttime. He groaned inwardly at the thought that there was still work to do, but he couldn't back out of it. He had managed to establish the protocol that Astrid got good sex if she treated him decently, and she hadn't specifically upset him recently, so he owed her some good sex, no matter how tired he was. He was afraid of what might happen if he broke the system. Gritting his teeth, he dragged himself to his feet and started shuffling toward the house.

He made it there, and into the bedroom. He didn't make it much farther than that, though, and fell asleep before the foreplay had progressed very far.

Astrid groaned in exasperated frustration, then sighed. Her eyes fell on her beautiful new sword, lying on a bench by the wall. She smiled to see it, then glanced back at her husband.

And realized with a jolt that he had fallen asleep _in her bed_.

For a while, she toyed with the idea of just leaving him there, and being sure to wake up early so she could laugh at his expression when he realized he'd slept in the marriage bed he apparently hated so much.

But then she looked at the sword again, and she sobered, and finally she got to her feet and took Hiccup up to the loft, where she lowered him into his own small bed and tugged a blanket over him. She watched him sleep for a moment, then sighed and went away.

o.o.o.o.o

Approaching ships were sighted, flying the Berserk flag. There were only two vessels and they were not decked out for war, so it was likely that they were coming in peace, probably in response to Stoick's death and/or Hiccup's marriage. The treaty between the two tribes would have to be renewed, and Chief Oswald the Agreeable would need to pay his respects. In the old days, Oswald would have been a guest at the wedding feast, but as the dragon war continued to intensify, old traditions were slowly being shortchanged or even laid aside as the Hooligans struggled desperately just to survive.

In any case, an ally chief was coming, and since no one other than the Bog-Burglars would have tolerated it if Astrid presented herself as the chief of Berk, it was time for Hiccup to do some playacting. Astrid dragged him out of the forge, threw the bearskin cloak over his shoulders, fussed over it because Hiccup's stick-thin body looked ridiculous buried under the enormous furry garment, then shoved her husband down to the pier to greet Oswald as he arrived.

"Aaahhh!" the older man called, spreading his arms in a friendly way. "How good it is to see my old allies! Terrible business, eh? Terrible business, indeed. Stoick was a good man."

"He will be missed," Hiccup said a little stiffly, trying not to fidget with discomfort.

"Times have really changed, eh, Chief Hiccup," Oswald lamented, clapping an arm around Hiccup's shoulders and propelling him along as they walked. "Those beasts have taken more from you than your people and your food stores - it's a sad day indeed when a tribe can't even draw in guests to the wedding of a chieftain's son."

"You Berserks would have been the only guests, anyway," Hiccup remarked. An unfortunate incident when he was ten years old had prompted virtually all the tribes of the Barbaric Archipelago to turn their backs on Berk. Oswald was the only one who had decided not to cut off the Hooligans entirely, and Trader Johann, a foreign merchant unaffiliated with any Viking tribe, would occasionally sneak in, flying his flags to attract Berk's attention and then waiting safely out of 'raiding range' as Hooligans rowed out to trade with him. Other than that, though, the Hooligans were completely isolated.

"Haha!" Oswald laughed, clapping Hiccup painfully on the back. "Thor above, lad, I remember when you were just a little thing toddling around with Dagur-"

 _'More like screaming for Dad to come save me as I ran for my life,'_ Hiccup thought.

"-and now look at you, a full-grown married chieftain! Well. Maybe not _full_ grown." The man laughed again and gave Hiccup a teasing punch on the arm. Hiccup's eyes watered with pain and he wished to be somewhere, _anywhere_ else. Or maybe that the dragons would come for a raid and take everyone's attention off of him.

"Aaahhh, and here's the lovely wife, yes?" Oswald cried, finally letting go of Hiccup so he could spread his arms at the tightly smiling Astrid. "What a catch, son, I must say; what - a - catch!"

"I'm the one who's caught," Hiccup muttered under his breath.

"Welcome to Berk, Chief Oswald," Astrid said sweetly, clasping his hand. "Come along to the Great Hall, we've prepared a meal for you and your men. I'm afraid it's not a feast like you're probably accustomed to-"

"Ah, no need to apologize, girl, I know how things are for you up here," Oswald said, waving his hand dismissively. "Front lines and all. Honestly, I'm surprised you lot have lasted this long!"

"We can be rather stubborn."

The treaty was successfully renewed later that afternoon. Oswald took his leave the next day without having ever seemed to notice how awkward and withdrawn the Hooligan 'chief' was, or how everyone seemed to look to his wife first for everything. As soon as the Berserks were gone, Hiccup went home and tore off his father's cloak and shoved it out of sight.

 _To be continued..._

Author's Notes: For the "unfortunate incident," see my one-shot _Each Day Of Life_. (It's the sequel to _Strongest Of Them All_.)

And I guess that Oswald's still alive in this AU.


	3. Chapter 6

**A** **DreamWorks'** _ **How to Train Your Dragon**_ **fanfic by Raberba girl Chapter 6 (rough draft)**

There was a raid the next night. Astrid threw her axe and shouted orders and swung her sword and ran and cried out warnings and killed five dragons and saved most of three flocks. Hiccup sharpened blades and pounded hot iron and whisked around the forge, he and Gobber expertly keeping out of each other's way.

When the sun rose on the carnage and the last of the attackers faded into the distant sky, Astrid went around encouraging and comforting survivors in between grimly organizing cleanup efforts, as Hiccup helped to wash and stitch up wounds. When at long last they got a chance to return home, both of them fell into their respective beds and were instantly asleep.

At the next town meeting, Hiccup saw the tired faces and despairing anger and helpless frustration of his people. He took a deep breath and brought up the suggestion that he'd been turning over in his head for a while now, about a method to collect rainwater and run it through connected troughs throughout the village to serve as a firefighting tool. "Then you'd just pull the rope over wherever the fire is, the trapdoor would open and dump-"

"Enough with the crazy ideas, Hiccup!" someone shouted.

"Yeah, they never work, anyway!"

Hiccup protested, "This one _will_ , it's just that-" Predictably, he was shouted down, and it took Astrid having to stand up on a table and hurl her axe at the pillar an inch from the loudest man's head and bellow at the top of her voice to cut through the noise.

"ALL OF YOU SHUT UP."

The shouts died down to grumbling.

Astrid turned to her husband. "Hiccup, it's a nice idea in theory," she said, "but we just don't have the resources right now to take on a large-scale project like what you're suggesting. You know your place, you have your niche, we need you there. Leave the rest of it to us, all right?"

He gritted his teeth and nodded and slouched down, eyes fixed on the floor so he wouldn't have to see the smirks people were shooting at him.

"Now," Astrid said, "if anyone has any _practical_ suggestions, you can go ahead and make them, but I think we need to look at this from a different angle."

That night, Hiccup went with Astrid to her bed without a fuss, but his hands on his wife were as passionless and businesslike as if he was working a machine. He performed his marital duties as quickly as possible and then, as soon as Astrid finished climaxing, he climbed off the bed and walked away. It was so abrupt that she felt cold at his absence.

"Hiccup!"

"Good night."

"Hiccup, get back here!"

"I've done my duty," he said coldly. "I'm going to bed now."

She stormed after him and seized him and dragged him back into her room. "We're doing it again, and this time you're going to do it _right_ ," she said, shoving him onto the bed.

He closed his hands on the sheets in readiness and gazed up at her defiantly.

"...Seriously?" she said. "You're going to pull this crap again?"

"I've - done - my - duty," he said, with exaggerated enunciation as if she was stupid. "We're finished for tonight."

Without thinking, she raised her hand to slap him, but froze when he flinched. She stared down at him, despising him, angrily noting the bruises on his face that hadn't faded yet. She slowly lowered her hand without striking him. "Is this about your stupid idea at the meeting today?"

"It wasn't stupid," he said, his voice sounding small and strangled like a hurt child's.

"So that's how it is?! I make a decision that's in the best interest of the village, but because you don't like it, you're going to pout like a spoiled little boy?"

He stared up at her for a while in silent fury, breathing hard. Finally he managed to say, "You have _all the power_ in this relationship, Astrid. You are _suffocating_ me. Whenever a crumb falls from your table, I'm going to lick it up, and if that means keeping my hands off you whenever you hurt me, then that's what I'm going to do."

"But I _didn't_ hurt you, I- GAH! Fine!" She shoved him up again and out the bedroom door. "See if I care! I don't need you! I'll take a-!" She didn't know what the word for a male mistress was, if such a word even existed. "I don't need you!" She slammed the door in his face.

The next morning, Hiccup made breakfast as usual (it had become clear early on that Hiccup was by far the better cook of the two, so it was often he who prepared the meals they ate at home). The unusual part was that whatever was in the bowl that he set before her with a slightly smug look tasted _terrible_.

"Ugh, what is this?!"

"What's wrong with your breakfast, Astrid?" Hiccup asked innocently.

"Did you even finish cooking it?!"

"Would you like me to put it back over the fire?"

"Just _fix_ it!" She shoved the bowl at him and went to go comb her hair. She was absorbed in the task until an awful smell got strong enough to jolt her attention. "HICCUP!"

"Yes?"

Smoke was pouring out of the cauldron.

"Are you crazy?! Get that thing off the fire, get it off, get it off!"

"Okay."

Once the cauldron had been moved to safety, Astrid stared at the blackened mess inside, dismayed. "Why did you _do_ that?!"

"Do what, make you breakfast?"

She seized the front of his tunic and jerked him close, pleased to see him gasp in alarm and flinch. "You ruined it on _purpose_ ," she snarled.

"If you want good food, then learn how to cook like a real wife," he said snidely.

She slapped him. She remembered at the last second to adjust for Hiccup's fragility, but he still stumbled back and nearly fell from the force of the blow. She waited for him to straighten up and rage at her, but he simply remained stooped and silent for a long time, cradling his struck cheek, his face hidden by his hair. Finally he left the house without a word, and Astrid had to go get breakfast in the Great Hall.

She spent the rest of the day, in between or even during her duties, considering the various men of the village. Unfortunately, she came to the conclusion that they were all too old, too young, or too repulsive for her to bear the thought of them touching her intimately. She'd rather just pleasure herself, which she did for several days, allowing Hiccup to hide from her in his stupid loft.

But she wanted a man. She wanted a man inside her, and Hiccup, horrible as he was, was the only man she could tolerate being inside her, and he claimed she held all the power in this relationship but _he_ was the one who was stifling her, controlling her, driving her mad with frustration...

She caught him by his collar before he could make it very far up the loft stairs. "Astrid-"

"I'm not going to rape you," she said shortly. She still thought it was ridiculous to call it 'rape,' even though she couldn't quite deny that it did feel sort of like that whenever she forced herself on Hiccup. "I just... It's just..." She sighed. "It can't take away from priority forgework, and you'll have to get approval from me for _all_ the materials and equipment you use. But you can _work_ on it, okay?"

"Work on...?" he said warily, looking a little confused.

"Your stupid water thing," she said through gritted teeth. "I'm not going to give you free rein, but you can _work_ on it, a little. I know you use sex as currency, so is that worth you giving me _some_ satisfaction tonight, at least?"

"...Yes." He came nowhere near pleasuring her to perfection, but he did service her adequately enough to take the edge off. The next day, after she provided him with just enough of his requested materials for him to make a start on construction, he made love to her as he had before, well enough that she could lie there peacefully afterward as he slipped back out of bed and padded up the stairs to his loft.

 _'Maybe we can make this marriage work after all,'_ she thought. She knew they would never, ever be lovers in the meaningful sense of the word, but they could be...business partners. They could figure out a system that worked to their mutual benefit.

o.o.o.o.o

The latest dragon raid left the Great Hall in worse shape than Astrid had ever seen it in her lifetime. It was unusable, the front of it basically one giant smoldering hole. Repairs needed to be made as soon as possible - not only was it bad for morale to see one of the most iconic parts of their village so badly damaged, but there were a lot of people who didn't have the means to eat some or all of their meals at home, and depended on getting food from the Great Hall. Not to mention the fact that during severe storms, the Hall's shelter was by far the safest place to be. Astrid made those repairs a priority.

She worked harder than anyone, cutting and hauling timber, measuring, sawing, anything that needed doing. Hiccup, who wasn't very suitable for the work and who was busy enough with his normal job anyway, was excused.

Astrid was surprised to see him approaching in the late afternoon, carrying a basket. "Hiccup?" She straightened up and wiped the sweat from her brow.

"Did you eat lunch?" he asked.

"Oh...no." There hadn't been enough of the communal meal to go around, so she had abstained from taking food out of the mouths of her people, and she hadn't wanted to stop work just to trek back home for a bite to eat.

"Here." He held out the basket.

Astrid stared at it. "What's that?"

"Your lunch," he said shortly. "I figured you'd...yeah."

A little bewildered, she took the basket and peeked inside. Her mouth started to water a little when she saw and smelled the meat and bread. "This is...for me?"

"Yes, Astrid," he said condescendingly.

"Thank you," she snapped, genuinely grateful but offended by his tone.

"Yeah, well, enjoy. Don't forget to bring the basket back home." He turned and left. She wolfed down her food, got back to work, and forgot to bring the basket back with her when it got too dark to keep working.

The next day, Astrid packed a lunch for herself, but ended up giving it to someone else when, again, there was not enough food to go around. She straightened her shoulders and took a deep breath and got back to work.

An hour later, Hiccup showed up with a pail of food. He paused in front of her and raised an eyebrow. Whatever he saw on her face made him shake his head and hold out the pail to her.

She sighed a little as she took it. "Thank you, Hiccup," she murmured.

He gave her a bitter smile and said, "Anything for my wonderful husband." He went away, picking up yesterday's basket when he passed by it.

Astrid stared after him, strangely disturbed. _'I already knew that I wear the pants in this relationship,'_ she thought, and couldn't understand why Hiccup's open acknowledgment, his resignation, seemed to bother her. On a whim, she hurried after her husband. "Hiccup!"

He paused and glanced back at her inquiringly.

She came to a stop before him and said, "I...I just..." She had come to apologize, but she wasn't sure why, and now she didn't care why, because she was distracted by his unmanly posture. "Stop _slouching_! You look like a rebellious twelve-year-old."

"Sorry," he said, without making any move to straighten his shoulders.

"Stand _up_. Good grief, you may be a lousy Viking, but can't you at least _fake_ being a proper one?"

He turned and walked away without a word. Then Astrid felt bad, which made her mad, so she made an "Uuuugghhhh" noise to vent her feelings. She ate the lunch her husband had made for her, then returned to work.

That night, when they went into her room together and got undressed and he started to reach for her, Astrid took his hands in hers. "Hiccup, wait."

He looked at her silently.

"I was thinking... I was thinking, I wasn't as grateful to you as I should have been for making me lunch the past couple of days, and...well, and, why don't you be on top tonight."

She was pleased to see that she had managed to shock him. "I...what?"

"It's your turn," she said softly. She laid back on the bed and smiled up at him, trying to ignore how uncomfortably vulnerable she felt.

He kept staring at her. "I..." It wasn't like he'd never been on top before, but it was always short-lived, and she had never _invited_ it like this. "I can...it's fine, I-"

She shifted slowly. Then shifted again, teasing him. He swallowed and climbed cautiously over her and rested his hand on her, and she was more pleased than she expected to be by the lust in his eyes. Despite their frequent lovemaking, he rarely seemed to _desire_ her like he did now. He leaned down and kissed her slowly.

She couldn't help herself. Her hands flew up to clutch him, she pressed deep into his mouth and crushed his body against hers. She was so caught up in passion that it took her a while to realize that he was squirming because he was struggling to get away from her.

As soon as her grip loosened, he sprang back and stared at her with the back of his hand protectively pressed against his mouth, his eyes wide.

"I'm sorry!" she exclaimed. "I'm sorry, I know that wasn't very submissive, I- I'm sorry. I'm not used to this. Let's try again."

"No," he said gruffly, "I- No, let's just...keep doing what we usually do, I...I know the rules for that..."

She swallowed. "Here," she said, gripping handfuls of the sheet beneath her, "I'll do your dead fish thing. And close my eyes. You can have your way with me and I'll try not to jump at you again."

"No," he said uncomfortably, "no, I really just..." He flopped down on his back and sighed. After a long pause, he said, "Are we done for the night, or are you going to do something?"

Reluctantly, feeling like she'd failed, she [*censored because FFN is stupid*] and leaned down to kiss him. She _tried_ to make love to him less aggressively than usual, and was pleasantly surprised about halfway through when he suddenly flipped her onto her back and kissed her hard. Usually, whenever this sort of thing happened, she would quickly regain dominance, but this time she let him stay above her and tried to follow his lead. It was not an occurrence that she wanted to happen regularly, but it _was_ a nice reward to keep in reserve for whenever her husband earned it.

 _To be continued..._


	4. Chapters 7-8

**A** **DreamWorks'** _ **How to Train Your Dragon**_ **fanfic by Raberba girl Chapter 7 (rough draft)**

Thus far, Hiccup had managed to keep his mistakes and screw-ups within tolerable, almost average levels. Perhaps his gift for destruction had simply been building up all this time, because there finally came one late night raid when his gift was spectacularly unleashed. By the time the attackers had retreated with their loot, half the village had been reduced to rubble, the armory was still on fire, and three-quarters of Berk's food supplies were _gone_.

There was a long, long moment of horrified silence, broken only by the wails of the injured and grieving.

Then Astrid screamed in a rage fueled by panic and grief, and Hiccup hurriedly backed away from her as she bore down on him. "Astrid, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I was just trying to help, I-"

Her fist cracked against his cheekbone. She seized him before he fell and hauled him up and punched him in the stomach, then threw him against the closest wall.

"How could you DO THAT?!" she screamed as she beat him. "It's GONE, all our stores are GONE, we are not going to survive this winter, you are TRYING to kill us, aren't you!"

He couldn't breathe after being struck with such heavy blows, he couldn't move, he lay in a crumpled heap on the ground trying and failing to say her name.

"You are WORSE than useless, you are a CURSE, a _blight_ , I should tie you to a mast and ship you off before you _completely destroy us_!" She didn't pause before driving a vicious kick into his gut, and he blacked out for a minute from the pain.

"Astrid!" Gobber came hobbling out of the shocked crowd as fast as he could. "Enough! You'll kill him!"

Astrid glared at him for a minute, then roared and raised her axe high over her head before driving it into the nearest dragon corpse. She turned her fierce eyes onto her people, barked out orders, and marched away, wondering if she was going to have to make real, actual lists of who would get food and who would be designated to starve to death.

Even after Hiccup came to, he stayed curled up on the ground, his arms over his head, trying to hide his sobs. He missed his father terribly. He even missed being scolded by his father. His father had yelled at him and lectured him, his father had been frustrated with him and had never understood him - but Stoick had _never_ beaten him, had never torn him down so savagely in front of the entire village. His father had looked at him with disappointment, frustration, anger, confusion, and exasperation, but Stoick had never looked at him with hatred.

Gobber grasped the young man's arm and hauled him to his feet, which took more than one try because Hiccup was in too much pain to stand up straight. "You all right, lad?" the smith asked helplessly.

Hiccup retched for a minute, then shakily wiped his mouth and started to stumble away.

"Hiccup!"

His apprentice disappeared into the forest.

About fifty-three hours later, once the weather permitted it, Astrid headed into the woods and began to systematically comb them for her husband. She eventually found him in a quiet cove, starving, filthy, and burning up with fever. "Oh, Hiccup," she sighed.

"I'm sorry, Dad... Astr-rid...I, I'm sorry...I'm...sorry..."

She carried him home, undressed him, winced at the sight of the bruises on his pale flesh, cleaned and bandaged him, then started to lay him down in her bed.

"No," he moaned, "no, no, no, no, no, no, no..."

"Sshh, Hiccup, it's okay," she muttered, tucking the blankets around him. "I'm just putting you here because it's easier to take care of you when you're downstairs."

"No, Astrid, no...please, Astrid..."

She went to fetch a bowl of probably awful stew, and prodded him awake again when she came back. "We can't spare this, thanks to you," she grumbled, "but my conscience won't let me just let you die, so open your mouth, Hiccup."

"Mmn." He clamped it shut.

"I'm _feeding_ you, Hiccup. If you waste this food, so help me, I will drag you back out to that cove and _leave_ you there to rot." She managed to get a few spoonfuls of food down his throat, though she pretty much had to traumatize him to do so. He was crying by the end of it, hopeless childlike sobs with no restraint. "You act like I'm _hurting_ you, Hiccup!" she said in exasperation.

"Dad," he wailed, "Dad, come back...Dad, please...come back...please come back..."

She woke up in the middle of the night to find him struggling free of most of the blankets heaped on him. "Hiccup?" She set a hand on his forehead. It felt damp and cool - his fever had broken.

"What happened?" he asked weakly.

"You sat through two storms in the middle of the woods and got sick. I hauled your stupid butt back home and fed you food that I should have saved for a pregnant woman or a warrior."

"...I screwed up. I screwed up so bad."

She sighed. "You're Hiccup. Screwing up is what you _do_ , I should have taken that into account. It's my fault for expecting you to be normal."

After a long silence, he finally asked in a small voice, "Can you help me up to the loft?"

"No. Go to sleep, Hiccup."

His frustrated exhale sounded almost like a sob. "Can I...can I please have some clothes...?"

She didn't want to get out of bed and go to the trouble of fetching his clothes and helping him dress when there was no one but his wife to see him. "You don't need clothes right now!" She sighed. "By the way, I'm... I apologize for hurting you."

"..."

"I'm sorry," she whispered, reaching to run a gentle hand over his bruised skin, wincing when he flinched. "No sex for a week, okay? I promise."

"...Astrid," he said in a low voice.

"Mm?"

"Maybe you _should_ ship me off."

"Ugh, Hiccup..."

"You were right. Everything you said was right. You should send me away so I can't hurt people anymore."

" _You're_ the one who's always getting hurt," she said roughly. "Hiccup...like it or not, you're mine. You're my husband, my...subject," even after all this time, she wasn't quite comfortable voicing the fact that she had stolen his crown, "my responsibility. I can't just ignore my problems, I have to deal with them."

"Please let me go sleep in the loft," he begged. "Please."

"No, Hiccup," she said gently. "You can't keep running and hiding from your problems, either. ...And I am too tired to drag you up all those stairs, anyway. Go to sleep." She stroked her hand through his hair until she finally sensed him drift off.

o.o.o.o.o

Astrid canceled virtually all other activities and spared everyone possible to go hunting and fishing, tasking just a few people with bare-minimum repairs. She sent out boats on long-term fishing voyages, temporarily consolidated flocks to free up their herders to search for food, and even started discussing with her mother and Phlegma the possibility of setting out on a raid - a raid of their own for edible loot (at this time, food was worth more than any amount of gold or jewels), the kind of raid on non-Viking territories that hadn't been done since the early years of the dragon war.

They ended up not needing to go that far, because Chief Oswald showed up. Hiccup donned the Hooligan chieftain's cloak again, looking more than ever as if the thing was trying to swallow him.

"Heard from your trading ship that those dragons really did a number on you! I brought some things you might like," Oswald said, gesturing toward his ship. He laughed at the bruises on Hiccup's face. "Been busy in the last few battles, eh? Let me guess, your opponents look even worse!"

"Not exactly..."

The haggling was tight, because Berk had so little to trade. Hiccup gave up far too many weapons and pieces of armor, in Astrid's opinion, even when he hissed at her in response to her tightening grip on his arm that he could make more. He also had the idea to call upon each Hooligan household to give up something in trade, and what was received in return would be for their own personal food stores.

After Oswald sailed away again, Hiccup also had the idea to put preserved food in trunks and bury them in random places "like, um, like squirrels," rather than the usual food storage facilities that the dragons had long ago learned to target. It didn't seem like _too_ bad an idea to Astrid, though she was very reluctant to sign off on it because it was a Hiccup idea.

They ended up compromising, putting _some_ food in extra-well-guarded storehouses, and _some_ food in trunks in the ground. Hiccup strewed the areas with pungent, sometimes offensive-smelling materials, saying it would prevent the dragons from sniffing out the caches, and he also made decoys in random spots, churning up the dirt and strewing stink, just in case the animals somehow figured out that 'smells like garbage + freshly dug ground = food.' For the same reason, he also insisted that the real caches remained unmarked in any way, instead keeping careful record of the location of each cache and decoy on a map in his notebook.

People scoffed at Hiccup for attributing so much potential intelligence to 'mindless, savage beasts,' but Astrid was more inclined to side with her husband's paranoia. In such desperate times, they couldn't be too careful.

During the next raid, most of the extra-well-guarded storehouses managed to hold, but only with heavy casualties, and at the cost of losing more livestock than usual. Astrid, turning her grief and frustration to anger as usual, never thought to praise or even acknowledge Hiccup for the fact that every single one of his hidden food caches remained untouched. It certainly didn't improve her mood that half of her house had been burned.

Hiccup saw his wife's raging emotions and stayed out of her way as much as possible, and tried to endure the nights of rough, frustration-venting sex. He kept quiet for as long as he could about the _other_ loss of that raid, until one day just after breakfast when she asked him to unearth one of his caches for the next Great Hall meal. She had calmed down somewhat by now, though he still dreaded having to tell her.

"Uuummm...yeah, see, funny thing about that-"

She seized the front of his tunic.

"Don't hit me, please don't hit me, it wasn't my fault, Astrid-" He cried out as she shoved him hard against the wall.

"You lost them," she hissed. "Of course. Somehow, you lost _all the food in the caches_ , didn't you, you worthless piece of-"

"I only lost _track_ of them, I didn't lose the food!" Hiccup cried desperately. "Please, Astrid, don't hurt me, I'll give up my food to someone else, please don't-"

She was frowning in confusion. "What do you mean you didn't lose the food?"

"It's still THERE! All the food is still there, I swear, I just..." He drew in a sobbing breath, trying to stay coherent. "The m-map, it, the map, in my notebook, it was, it was in my room, and...my room..."

They both looked up at the loft. The walls and roof had been repaired, but half the interior of Hiccup's room was still charred, and the smell of burned wood still filled the house.

"...The map is gone?"

"Yeah," he whispered.

She took a deep breath and released him. He kept sinking until he was on his knees, feeling too weak and dispirited to keep facing her. "Fine," she said. "Fine. That's okay. That's not as bad. We can work with this." She turned away and strode back outside, calling for people to bring shovels.

Hiccup wanted desperately to go to his room and curl up under the covers and fall asleep forever, but he was still swamped with work, trying to restock the armory that he himself had traded away in exchange for food to replace the stores that he himself had been responsible for losing. He crept back to the forge and refused to speak to anyone but Gobber for the rest of the day.

When Astrid came home, the house was dark and empty. Grumbling, she had to make her own supper, and she had already started on the accounts by the time Hiccup trudged in. "I left you some," she said, nodding at the bowl on the table.

Hiccup sat down and started silently picking at his food. At one point, she asked him a question that was supposed to be an attempt at friendly conversation. "Did you get much done today?"

"Yes," he mumbled.

"Good."

"Mm."

There was a long pause. "How did your father manage to deal with this on a regular basis?" she wondered aloud. "My hair's going to go gray early, I can _feel_ the stress aging me."

"I guess that stressing people out is one of my many talents."

"Yup."

"...That's not the kind of remark that you agree with out loud, Astrid."

"Well, it's true, isn't it?"

"It's not like I do it on purpose! I'm trying to _help_ , you know. All I do, _all_ of it is just me trying to _help_ my own village! I wouldn't make so many mistakes if you guys didn't keep making me so nervous, why can't you ever cut me some slack?!"

"The dragons are never going to cut us any slack, Hiccup," Astrid said hotly. "Winter is never going to cut us any slack. Outcasts will never cut us any slack. That's the _point_ , Hiccup. I don't know why you can't seem to understand this, but life is _supposed_ to be hard. It makes you stronger. When things go wrong, you don't lie down and cry about it, you _do something_. You _fight back_. You _conquer_."

"Yeah, we've been real successful with that," Hiccup said bitterly. "The war should be ending any day now."

"Why do you always have to be so sarcastic?! The war isn't a joke, Hiccup!"

"Just because I'm _making_ a joke about the war doesn't mean I think the _war_ is a joke! Don't you people _ever_ get depressed?! Don't you ever go crazy for _some_ kind of humor so that all the bad things don't crush you with how horrible they are?!"

"I think you're just easier to crush than the rest of us are."

He hissed through his teeth. "Yeah, I know."

"Stoick was so lenient with you... Maybe if he'd been harder on you, you would have gotten tougher growing up."

"Can we please not talk about my father?"

"Why do you act like you can't bear to even hear his name? You're like a spoiled little kid who didn't know how good he had it."

"Yeah, my life was just AWESOME!" he yelled. "I _loved_ getting teased and mocked and pushed around and knocked down and insulted by people who were supposed to be my friends! I _loved_ being raised by a man who called himself my father but was so different than me that we might as well have been strangers! It _hurt_ , Astrid. It still hurts. The bad things don't make me stronger, they tear at me and make me _weaker_."

"Well, then there's something wrong with you," she snapped. "There's always something wrong with you, I don't know why you have to be so _different_."

"I wish I knew. I _wish_ \- _I_ - _knew_. All I've ever wanted, _all_ I've ever wanted was just to be like the rest of you. I just want to be one of you, but I try so hard and I always mess up but I _try_ , can't I at least get some credit for trying?!"

"Not when you gift-wrap 75% of our food and hand it over to the monsters who are trying to exterminate us."

"I said...I said I was...I said I was sorry...!" He could no longer speak, he was crying too hard. He pressed his hands over his mouth in a vain attempt to hold in his sobs, bowed over with his face hidden against his knees.

Astrid watched him, hating that she had to be married to him, but also thinking, _'This is what it looks like when you break your husband.'_ She didn't feel powerful, or as if she'd won anything. She felt like Hiccup was a chain around her neck, and if he sank, then she sank right along with him.

Slowly, she crouched down beside Hiccup and put an arm around his shoulders. She felt mostly contempt for his pain, but she wanted him to stop that awful crying.

"Why...why do you hate me so much?" he choked out. "I... _I_ didn't ask to marry you...I've done everything you wanted...but you hate me so much, you hate me _so much_..."

She wanted to dismiss the question, but found herself thinking about it, and didn't respond for so long that he probably gave up expecting her to. Then she said slowly, "I...when we first got married..." She couldn't bring herself to say that she had been frightened of him. Her virgin self had been distressed at the thought of baring herself to a man and having to be invaded by him, so she had frantically taken control of the situation and shifted as much power to herself as she could.

She wasn't scared of sex anymore, of course. But there was still the fact that she didn't want to be vulnerable or beholden to Hiccup, that she didn't want to trust herself to his mercy, that she needed to be the one in charge. Her fear and anxiety had been unacceptable, so she'd transformed it into anger - and she hurt him. She hurt him because it was better to hurt him than to let herself get hurt.

She was too proud to admit any of this to him, but she did say quietly, "I shouldn't hold grudges, they cloud my judgment. I'm sorry, Hiccup."

"I wish I'd never been born. I wish they'd sent me out to sea, I wish I'd never been born..."

 _To be continued..._

 **A** **DreamWorks'** _ **How to Train Your Dragon**_ **fanfic by Raberba girl**

 **Chapter 8 (rough draft)**

Astrid's rage from the recent terrible raids had faded, but now she was getting angry and on edge again, this time because of her own people.

They were _disrespecting_ her. They'd grin when she gave orders as if they were just humoring her, they'd backtalk, they'd disobey when she wasn't looking, they'd say mocking things couched as 'jokes.' It drove her crazy, and, as usual, a lot of her feelings got vented on Hiccup.

"What is _wrong_ with you?" she screamed as she stared at the food on the floor, fallen there when he'd tripped on his way to bringing it to the table. "We have _nothing to spare_ , we're already on tight rations as it is, and you go _wasting_ the little we _do_ have?!"

"Astrid-"

Her fury seemed to take her over as if it made her a different person. She seized Hiccup and forced him to his knees, head shoved toward the food, just an inch or two short of grinding his face in it. "I am not dragging out more food we _can't spare_ just to feed your pathetic, useless carcass, if you want to eat then you can eat _that_ off the floor, go on, _go on_ , eat it-"

"What is wrong with you!" he cried, struggling in vain to get free.

She flipped him over and reared back her fist. He threw up his arms just in time to protect his face, but cried out at the impact on his forearm. She didn't care that it wasn't his face as long as her fist connected with _something_ , she pulled back to punch again-

"Do it with a knife!"

"What?" she snarled.

"I'd rather have my throat slit than be beaten to death! Get out your knife! Come on!" he screamed at her.

She stared at him, caught off guard by his own anger, by the wild look in his eyes. It was the look of a cornered animal, lashing out because there is nothing left to lose.

She lowered her fist, but gripped him even tighter as she ground out, "You should never have been allowed to live, you've done nothing for your own people but hurt them, you're worse than a waste of space-"

He hit her. He _hit_ her. It didn't hurt much but it startled her enough, and he scrambled quickly enough, that he was actually able to break free and grab her wrists for a moment.

The sensation of someone trying to hold her down and control her was unbearable. She screamed and lashed out, and the next second he was pinned helplessly beneath her just as he should be.

"NO! LISTEN TO ME!" he shouted in her face.

"I'm debating whether or not to kill you," she said, a tiny bit sincerely. "You'll be better off if you keep your mouth shut."

He would not keep silent, for his voice was the only weapon he had left. "I am not an animal whom you can just _decide_ whether or not to kill. I am a human being, with feelings just like yours, that you hurt _all the time_ , even worse than you hurt this." He twitched to indicate his whole body, since both his hands were pinned. "I am not useless." His face twisted. "I AM _NOT USELESS_!"

She knew, in the back of her mind, what he was going to say, even before he said it.

"I am a good smith, Gobber couldn't run the shop without me. He could not, and there is _no one_ on Berk who could take my place there." Since she was just starting to feel guilty, of _course_ he would choose that moment to let tears start trickling down his face and harden her again. "I can cook better than you. Yes, I was a clumsy stupid just-kill-me-now moron who dropped the food, but it still tastes better than anything you could make. If it weren't for me, you'd have to trek up to the Great Hall every time you want to eat."

She glowered, embarrassed.

"Not to mention, _I'm_ the ONLY reason you're running Berk in the first place. If it weren't for me, you'd be taking orders from Snotlout. So I am not useless, Astrid. I may be a screw-up, but I have _some_ value, and I don't deserve much but I _do_ deserve to be treated better than dirt. Even my dad...even my dad, who was so ashamed of me, never treated me like you do."

She gritted her teeth at the mention of Stoick, getting a mental image of him standing there, watching her hurt and dominate his son. Grudgingly, she got off of her husband and turned to the meal, scraping the salvageable parts of it off the floor and into bowls. They ate silently, they worked on the accounts, and then they looked at each other. "Good night," Hiccup said quietly. He turned away and moved slowly toward the stairs, glancing back over his shoulder as if he expected her to be on her way to assault him.

"...Good night, Hiccup," she said. His expression turned relieved, he nodded, and they retreated to their separate rooms.

o.o.o.o.o

Between the continued insubordination of her own subjects, and the nagging guilt about how she was treating her husband, Astrid had a horrible day. She returned home exhausted, in a bad mood, and telling herself determinedly that she _would not_ hit or yell at Hiccup tonight, she _would not_ , she would go outside and throw axes if she caught herself starting to take out her feelings on him.

The house smelled delicious from whatever was cooking, and she groaned in relief and pleasure.

"Rough day?" Hiccup asked, his tone friendly but his shoulders hunched defensively.

"Yeah," she sighed, plopping down beside him at the fireside. "I don't know what is wrong with those people, it's not like they objected much to taking orders from a woman before..." She peered at the roasting meat. "How soon will it be done?"

"About ten or fifteen minutes."

"I'm starving... Move it closer, Hiccup, than we can eat it sooner." She noted absently that there seemed to be less food than usual. Their larder must be running low again, big surprise.

"Astrid," he said in a gentle, cautious voice, "is it okay if you trust me a little bit?"

"What?"

"I know you're really hungry, but trying to speed up the cooking like that is often why the food burns. And gets ruined, remember." He exhaled a very deep, resigned breath. "If you need...something to take your mind off the wait...I guess we can make out or something."

She stared at him. It was a very generous offer, considering that she was pretty sure she was still in punishment for unfairly hitting and raging at Hiccup just the night before. "I...I can wait-" Her stomach growled, accompanied by a flare of hunger so intense that it was a physical pain. She, like many of the other villagers, had been skipping midday meals in order to help the remaining food last longer. "No, I can't."

Hiccup tilted his head and allowed his lips to part, inviting her to kiss him.

She did, but instead of devouring his mouth like usual, she took his face in her hands and simply pressed her lips to his for a moment. Her eyelids fluttered open, and she saw him staring at her. She pulled back, a little embarrassed.

"Uh..."

"I know you're still mad at me," she mumbled, "and I'm sorry. I'd be mad at me, too." She drew in a deep breath. "Thank you, Hiccup. For...for distracting me. When I know all you want to do is push me away."

He was silent for a long moment. "...You really are attractive, you know. It's the _rest_ of you that turns me off and...and scares me...but if it was just your sexiness, all by itself...I'd probably be all over you."

She was not sure what to say to this, feeling a weird mixture of offense and breathless elation.

After a minute, when she made no move to hit him or anything, he leaned close again and kissed her, gently sucking at her lip. She closed her eyes and made herself relax, wrapping her arms around his neck, trying to attune herself to him, gradually finding his pace. This sort of kissing was not quite as satisfying to her, but it was a lot sweeter, and she liked it more than she expected to when he lowered her to the floor. She decided to see where he would lead her this time, instead of trying to forge the way herself.

He paused and broke off to stare down at her. She finally realized that it was because she _wasn't_ yanking him beneath her as usual whenever this sort of thing happened. She brought up her legs to wrap them around his waist, and she smiled.

"Astrid?"

"I'm in the mood for something different."

"Oh... Uh..." He seemed uncomfortable being above her, even though not so long ago he'd been longing for it. Astrid wondered fleetingly if she really had him that whipped, that she could...could _change_ his preferences like that.

"Here," she said, "put your hand here, move your knee over..." She tried to teach him how to do it right, but they didn't get very far before his eyes slid toward the fire and he jumped up, saying with audible relief, "Oh, look, supper's ready!"

There was only one bowl. Astrid stared at it, puzzled. "Where's your share?"

"I ate at Gobber's earlier."

"Oh..."

A little later, Astrid felt more hopeful as she took hold of her husband and glanced at her bedroom, and was disappointed when he gently took her hand off his arm. "Good night, Astrid." He did, however, kiss her thoroughly before he went upstairs, which was nice.

"I'm sorry, Hiccup," she called up to him. He gazed down at her from the top of the stairs. "I apologize. I've been wrong for mistreating you. I'm very sorry."

He nodded. "I'll see you tomorrow night."

"In there?" she couldn't help asking, pointing to her room.

He smiled a little and turned away.

o.o.o.o.o

A few nights later, Astrid eagerly pulled off her husband's clothes and then paused, staring.

"We'd better get a move-on, Astrid," Hiccup murmured. "I might fall asleep before we finish."

"Hiccup?" She traced her fingertips over his ribs and hip bones. "This is worse than usual."

"Huh?"

"You are _skin and bone_ , Hiccup. It's kind of turning me off- Not because-! I mean, it's just, it looks like it'll be _uncomfortable_. To make love to you. Bones poking into me every which way and all that."

"Maybe...I can put my clothes back on?" he suggested drowsily. He had started shivering. "Padding... So cold..."

"Hiccup, what did you eat today?" she asked abruptly. There was a long pause. "Hiccup!" She shook him awake again.

"Wha...?!"

"Hiccup, tell me everything you've eaten today," she demanded.

He started to look annoyed. "Just...sex me and leave me alone, Astrid. I'm _tired_..." He was still shivering.

"Are you tired and cold because you're starving yourself?"

"..."

" _Hiccup_!"

He started to struggle off the bed. "I'm going to my room..."

She caught him and pushed him back. "You keep telling me you've been eating at Gobber's. Have you been _lying_ to me, Hiccup?"

"...Don't hit me."

"You've been lying?!"

"Don't...hit me...you should be happy, you should be...more food for the others...my fault..."

She wrapped him in blankets and sat him down in the main room and forced some bread into him. His stomach gave a tremendous growl, so she threw a whole chunk of meat into the cauldron.

"I'm sorry, Astrid...don't hit me...it was my fault we lost so much food, I should be the one to go without, I...I'm sorry..."

"Eat," she ordered.

He obeyed, looking like he was going to collapse from either weakness or misery.

"Yes, it was your fault," she said shortly. "But I have to feed my people, and _you're_ one of my people, Hiccup. Eat."

"You're right," he mumbled, "I take food out of people's mouths and then I get so tired I can't even smith well. Just an all-around failure. _All around_ failure."

"Shut up. Finish your food."

o.o.o.o.o

The next day, she got so frustrated at work that she decided not to go home first. She was afraid of what she might do to Hiccup when she felt so angry. She went to her mother instead, spending an hour venting her feelings and weeping tears that she would let nobody else see.

"Astrid," her mother said after she had calmed down, "why don't you try to see things from their perspective."

"I haven't _done_ anything wrong! I haven't asked anything unreasonable of them, I've never ordered anyone to do something that I wouldn't be willing to do myself!"

"Then maybe it's a different problem. Astrid...I didn't like seeing you beat your own husband in public like that."

Astrid froze, remembering the night of that awful raid where they had lost so much. "I...I'm _fixing_ it, we might just make it through winter after all without denying anyone too much food, I...I even apologized to Hiccup..."

"Astrid. No one has ever respected your husband, and it was bad enough when he seemed to just be a useless weight around your neck. But now he's even less than nothing, he's worth all our scorn for being so helpless against his own wife," she kept talking over her daughter's protests, "and really, Astrid, why should we respect a chief who would marry a man who lets her treat him like that?"

Astrid was silent for a long time. She thought about how she would feel if someone else was ruling the village, and how much - or, rather, how little - respect she would have for a chief who abused his helpless spouse, even if he was an exemplary leader in every other way. _'I don't look strong. When I hurt someone weaker than me, when I do it where everyone can see me fly into a rage, it proves that I can't keep control of my feelings. If I can't handle a husband who's my inferior, then I'd have no hope of handling a man who'd be my equal.'_

She drew in a deep, shaky breath. "I try. I _try_ , Mom, I go home with all the best intentions, but he makes it so _hard_ sometimes."

"You knew it would be a challenge right from the start. You knew how very unhappy you could be in this marriage, and I hope you remember what I told you on your wedding day that _you_ are the one who needs to change if you want this relationship to be different. You can't expect the other person to do it first, you have to be willing to make your own sacrifices."

"I'll try. I'll try, Mom."

When she got home, she found Hiccup in his bed. He looked up at her lethargically. "Hi, Astrid."

"Did you eat today?"

"A little."

"Okay. Well, you're going to eat again now. Are you too tired to cook?"

"Yeeesss," he moaned.

"Okay. Then you can just sit there and give instructions, and I'll cook."

"What?"

She pulled him out of bed, helped him down the staircase, sat him in a chair with a blanket wrapped around him, then set some food on the counter and put her hands on her hips. "Okay, where do I start?"

Hesitantly at first, then with more confidence as they got the hang of working together, Hiccup directed her cooking. The food still wasn't as good as his, but it wasn't terrible either, and Hiccup actually sounded sincere when he complimented her afterward.

"You up for sex tonight?" she asked later.

"Y...Yes."

She studied him. "Or we can just lie in bed and make out for a while."

"I can...no, I can...it's okay..."

That's what was different, she suddenly realized. Earlier in their marriage, he had been more assertive about his sexual preferences and moods. Now, it seemed like she had pounded her own desires into him so thoroughly that he didn't seem to know what to _do_ whenever she tried to lend him even a tiny bit of control. _'Choices,'_ she thought. _'I kept taking away his choices, and now his personality is suffocating. I'm making him boring.'_

She took his hand and led him into the bedroom. He followed without resisting.

His head was hanging a little, but it jerked up when she asked him to undress her. "What?"

He did pull off her clothes fairly often, but she was always hurrying him through that and he'd never had the chance to really _disrobe_ her before, to unwrap her at his leisure like a gift. That was what she was offering him now, mostly just to see what he would do. He _had_ said that, all things being equal, he still found her physically attractive, right? "I don't feel like taking my own clothes off tonight. You do it."

Hesitantly, as if he was expecting a trick, he undid her belt and laid it aside. She smiled and rubbed her palms slowly over his chest. "That's nice. Keep going."

Each time he peeled back a layer that exposed skin, he spent a little time kissing her there. [. . .] Afterward, she moved up to lie beside him, rubbing slow circles on his chest, rather enjoying the dazed look on his face.

"Astrid," he whispered at last, "thank you."

She kissed him. "You're welcome."

He let out a long sigh and unexpectedly curled into her, wrapping his arms around her and nestling his head in the crook of her neck as if they were lovers for real.

"...Hiccup?"

"Mm."

"I thought you were tired. Aren't you going to go up to bed?"

"I think I'll sleep here tonight," he murmured, absently kissing her [*censored because FFN is stupid*] before resettling his head against her.

She had absolutely no idea why that made her suddenly want to cry. She played her fingers through his hair as she fought the tears back, and eventually, for the first time in her life, she fell asleep in her husband's arms.

 _To be continued..._

Author's Notes: A bigger chunk than usual got censored. It was basically Astrid putting Hiccup's sexual pleasure before her own, for once.


	5. Chapter 9

**A** **DreamWorks'** _ **How to Train Your Dragon**_ **fanfic by Raberba girl Chapter 9 (rough draft)**

The next morning, right after breakfast, Astrid started her experiment. "Which one do you think I should wear today, Hiccup? The brown or the blue?" She held the shirts one by one against her chest.

Hiccup stared at her as if she'd just remarked that the sky was bright green. "Uh...just wear whatever you want."

She sighed, but then reminded herself that this was the entire point, to start counteracting the personality-erasing training that she'd apparently been crushing him with all this time. "I'm asking _you_ , babe."

" _Babe_?"

"You're my husband. You know what you'd like to see me wear, right?"

"Uhhhh...I, uh, Astrid-"

"Hiccup. Sweetie," she said through gritted teeth. "I am asking you a question, and I am trying to be patient and nice about it, but you are irritating me right now. Please just answer the question so it's easier for me to not get angry."

"I- I mean, the brown looks- It looks nice but they _both_ look nice, they really do-!"

"You think I should wear the brown?"

He looked trapped. "...What is the right answer to that?"

 _'Man up!'_ she wanted to scream at him. She fought to keep her voice calm. "The right answer is whatever your real opinion is. Do you like the brown shirt on me better?"

"Y-e-e-e-s-s-s," he said cautiously. "Please don't hit me."

"I'm _not_ going to hit you, Hiccup!" She flounced back to her room and put the brown shirt on, but Hiccup was already gone by the time she came back out again.

o.o.o.o.o

The village's response to Astrid's changes were the opposite of instantaneous. She had started getting along with her husband a little better in the past few days, but her subjects were still driving her crazy, and she came home exhausted again. She made an unintelligible grunt in response to Hiccup's greeting, trudged into her room, and threw herself facedown across the bed.

After a while, Hiccup came into the room. She felt him climb onto the bed and sit on her thighs, supporting some of his weight with his legs kneeling on either side of her. She wondered what he was doing, but was too tired to push him off or even ask. Just as she was incredulously considering the possibility that he might dare to try taking her from behind, she was very pleasantly surprised to feel his hands kneading her shoulders instead.

"Uuurrrgghhh," she groaned in relief. "Ohhhh, Hiccup...oooohhhh, that feels good..."

"Tough day?" he asked, pausing to tug her shirt off. His massaging hands felt even better against her bare flesh.

"Yyyyeeeesss...URGH right there, right there _right there_..."

After a long time, she started to cry. It happened so gradually that it caught her off-guard. When she first realized that tears were trickling down her cheeks, she tried to hide it, but then her shoulders heaved. She tried to hold the sobs in but was distressed to know that Hiccup could obviously tell what was happening anyway. His hands on her back went still, and she dissolved into a weeping mess, hating herself.

She didn't know how she expected Hiccup to react, but he surprised her again. Without saying a word, he lay down and tucked her close against him, folding their legs together and wrapping his arms securely around her, so that he was cradling her entire body with his. She always thought of him as being little, but the truth was that he was a tall man, and she felt completely enclosed by him. Yet far from feeling trapped or suffocated, she felt _safe_.

After a while, he started stroking a hand through her hair and murmuring comforting things to her, and she felt ashamed of herself. If their positions had been switched, she would have despised him for showing weakness; yet when she was the one crying, he treated her tenderly and soothed her. _'He's right,'_ a voice whispered in her mind. _'It might be the weak way to respond, but I don't care...it's the_ better _way.'_

She finally sniffled her way to a stop, sat up, and wiped her face.

"You hungry?" he asked quietly.

"Mm-hm."

After they ate and did the accounts, Hiccup glanced automatically at Astrid's room, but was surprised when his wife moved toward the stairs instead. "Astrid?"

"I was thinking... I barely ever see your room, Hiccup."

Alarmed, he hurried past her and tried to block her way up the stairs. "You said I could _have_ it!"

"I'm not going to touch anything, Hiccup! I just want to look."

He hovered anxiously as she reached the loft, looked around for a long moment, then approached the desk. Forgetting her promise, she reached out and traced a fingertip over one of the designs pinned to the corkboard. "What is this?"

"Nothing," he muttered.

"Is this a...is this for the forge? Some kind of-" She squinted. "A water wheel?"

"It's stupid," he said, yanking the paper off the wall and starting to rip it in half. Shocked, she caught his hands before he could crumple the torn sheet. "It's stupid, all my ideas are stupid. They're just doodles and daydreams, anyway; I don't plan on doing any of this for real. I've learned my lesson..."

Astrid was studying the page, trying to hold the torn edges together. "This looks like it might actually work."

"None of my ideas ever work," he mumbled.

"A few of them do." She looked around again and went to examine the helmet he never wore, and the battered, sea-stained stuffed animal that kind of looked like a Deadly Nadder. She pressed her lips closed so that she wouldn't comment aloud that his room really was like a child's room.

Her eyes fell on the (unmade) bed. After a moment, she started walking toward it, shedding clothes as she went.

"Astrid, what are you doing?!"

"Let's have sex," she said.

" _Here_?!"

Naked, she stretched out on his bed and smiled. The blanket smelled like him. "Right here."

He swallowed as he stared at her, and whatever he might have thought about the proposal, she could tell that his body liked it, at least. "Sh...Shouldn't we...go downstairs...?"

Turning over onto her stomach, she hugged his pillow and buried her face in it and inhaled deeply. She heard him take a step. She glanced over her shoulder at him, then shifted and propped herself up on an elbow. "Do you really hate the idea?"

"N...No," he whispered, his eyes full of lust. Yet he paused before he reached her. He closed his eyes, shook his head hard as if trying to clear it, then said firmly, "But I don't want to be dominated in my own bed, Astrid. I'll do anything for you downstairs, but up here...this place is mine." His expression took on an apprehensive look, but he had barely stammered, and he didn't take back what he'd said.

"...Ravish me, Hiccup," Astrid said quietly.

He did.

She discovered that she liked it more than she had expected to. His narrow, hard bed was much less comfortable than the master bed downstairs, but Astrid found that she didn't care. She didn't leave when they finished making love, either - she spent the night in the loft, spooning with Hiccup so that neither of them would fall off the bed.

Afterward, Hiccup discovered that he was never able to look at his childhood bed the same way again.

o.o.o.o.o

One evening, Astrid made a point to get home before her husband. When he arrived, she gestured at the food she'd put on the counter and asked, "What should we have for supper tonight, Hiccup? Dried fish, or jerky?"

"Whatever you want," he said, stooping to tend to the fire.

She exhaled to maintain her patience. "I'm asking you. As in, it's a genuine question."

He eyed her. "Why are you asking me? I'm fine with both. Just pick whichever."

"But which one do you want _more_?"

"What is this?" he complained, straightening up. "First the shirts, now this. I don't _care_ , Astrid. And of course _you_ don't, either, and it's not like it's worth making a fuss over, so just pick what you want and let's eat. I'm hungry."

"...I might be the chief of Berk, and that's not something I'll ever give up, but you are my husband. You're the head of this household. I'm supposed to manage it, but you're the head of it."

He snorted.

"I know we're just pretending," she said in frustration, "but would you believe me if I said I feel a little bad about taking _everything_ from you? At least... For the little things, at least, I want you to feel like you have a choice."

"The little, unimportant things that nobody cares about. I see."

"Would you just pick a meal, Hiccup?!"

"Fine! Whatever! Fish!"

"...Okay," she said. Hearing the reluctant tone of her own voice, she wished she hadn't paused for so long.

"What," he taunted, "are we going to eat jerky anyway? Were we _always_ going to eat jerky, or did you just choose the one that I _didn't_?"

"We're having fish," she said, "because that's the one you picked."

"But you'd _prefer_ the jerky, right?"

"Honestly, yes, but it's not a big deal, Hiccup. And if we ate the jerky tonight, then we'd just have to eat the fish tomorrow, anyway. So just...just serve the fish, Hiccup!" She blinked. "Wait, I'm the wife, I'll serve the fish."

"Don't bother, I'd rather you didn't ruin it with your Touch Of Death when it comes to food."

She was so busy trying to keep a lid on her temper and not hit him that she didn't notice what he had put back into the larder until he was already dividing the ration of jerky and bread onto two plates. "...You picked the fish, Hiccup."

"Well, I changed my mind, we're having jerky," he snapped.

"You're only saying that because you know that was my preference!"

"It doesn't matter, because _everything_ that happens in this village and especially in this house is _your preference_ , Astrid!"

"Why do you always have to turn everything into a fight?! I'm _trying_ to treat you better, Hiccup!"

"Oh, thank you, Master. I'm eternally grateful for your magnanimous kindness."

She clenched her hands into her fists and chanted to herself, _'Do not commit murder, do not commit murder, do not commit murder.'_ Then she strode over to the larder, flung it open, and brought the fish back out again. "Fine," she said. "If you won't be honest about your preferences, then we'll eat _both_. Win-win."

"Are you kidding? We'll _lose_ tomorrow when we have nothing at all to eat for supper! And you've been skipping lunches, anyway, you'll starve-"

She defiantly started cramming fish and jerky into her mouth. "Eat, Hiccup," she demanded through all the food.

"...You'll be starving," he continued quietly after a moment, "and the hunger will make you irritable, and then you'll be angrier than usual and have less self-control than usual, and I'm going to end up with even more bruises."

There was no way to win. There was just _no way to win_ with this man.

After she swallowed the mouthful of food, Astrid said coldly, "I don't know why you always pretend to be so weak and helpless, Hiccup, because you are a _master_ manipulator. You're probably just letting me think I'm the chief, when really it's you running the show behind my back the whole time."

"Hah! You give me too much credit, Astrid. You give me way, way, _way_ too much credit. In fact, that might even be the most complimentary thing anyone has ever said to me since...ever."

"I wonder why!" she shouted, and stormed out.

Later that night, she returned to the house and crept up to the loft and came up behind Hiccup at his desk and wrapped her arms around him.

"No sex tonight," he said coldly.

"I _know_." She expelled a breath, trying to remind herself that she'd never given him any reason to think she'd seek him out like this for anything else. "I just wanted to apologize."

"...Fine. Apology accepted. Now good night."

His arms were covering whatever schematic he'd been working on, but she could see the little drawings he'd doodled on the corners and sides of the page.

"You're really good," she murmured, reaching out to touch the little charcoal image of Gobber's laughing face.

Hiccup abruptly flipped the paper facedown.

"It was a _compliment_!"

"Thank you," he said tonelessly.

"I'm _trying_ , Hiccup. Please meet me halfway."

He took a deep breath. There was a pause. Then he said, "I can't think of anything nice to say to you that doesn't involve sex."

She couldn't move or speak. She felt cold.

After a while, he said thoughtfully, "No, I guess that's not true. You're very...passionate about protecting the village."

"Mmn," was all she could manage.

"..." He sighed. "You're a better chief than me. I know you are, but...it still hurts."

"...There was no other way I could be chief, Hiccup. There are _rules_. I had to marry a male chieftain, and it was a choice between you or _Snotlout_ , and..." She trailed off. Then she said, very softly, "Should I have married Snotlout?"

Strangely, the prospect didn't seem quite as unbearable as it had been before. She still would have had to make awful sacrifices, but...maybe it would have saved Hiccup some pain. She was starting to see that he didn't deserve to suffer for things that, when she thought about it, weren't really his fault. And after all she had dealt with in her marriage so far, the challenges of dealing with Snotlout didn't seem so insurmountable now.

"Maybe," Hiccup muttered, "though I wouldn't wish Snotlout even on you."

She smiled a little. It sounded rude, but at the same time it weirdly felt like a compliment. "He might have been easier to handle than you are."

" _Easier_?!"

She looked at him seriously. "I can throw you over my shoulder and do whatever I want to your body, but somehow it still feels like you fight me tooth and nail, no matter how much I try to... _'Subdue you.'_ "I feel like no matter what I do, you always manage to get your own way. No matter what I say, you always have some hurtful comeback to throw back at me." _'Sometimes it hurts deeper than a knife could. You have this weird power over me that I don't understand.'_ "You limit my choices, you wear me down until I'm exhausted...sometimes you make me feel so _trapped_."

He was staring at her incredulously.

"I don't think it would be that way with Snotlout. He's a self-centered idiot-" _'Which is...pretty much the opposite of you.'_ "-but I think I know now how to get self-centered idiots to do what I want without a fuss. But you..." _'I don't think I will ever, ever conquer you, Hiccup.'_ "You're too strong for me."

"You've got to be kidding me," he whispered.

"It's true. I don't know how or why, but it's true. You're...unique, Hiccup. I don't think I would ever meet anyone else like you, even if I traveled to the ends of the earth."

After a long, contemplative silence, Hiccup asked softly, "Why can't we be happy?"

"What would make you happy?" she asked curiously.

He leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. "To be like my dad. To be a real Viking."

"...That would make you happy?" Large size and general Vikingness didn't seem to suit him.

"No," Hiccup burst out. He gave her a frustrated look. "I don't know what to do. For so long, I thought I wanted to become a great warrior and kill a dragon and get to date you, but now I'm married to you and I'm more miserable than I was before. I...I just want to _belong_. I want to find somewhere... _somewhere_...where I can be - where I can be _proud_ to be me."

After a long moment, she said thoughtfully, "I don't think you were ever meant to be a Viking, Hiccup."

He stared at her, looking hurt and resentful.

"I didn't mean it like that! I meant- I meant, you're very good at something that's _not_ being a Viking. It's like you were born in the wrong place. You weren't made for war, but there's got to be _somewhere_ , some village or city that could use a man like you. What do people do when they're not in a war with dragons, anyway? I don't even _know_. But places like that exist, don't they? Places where people don't spend every single moment fighting for survival."

After another long silence, Hiccup asked, "What would make you happy, Astrid? Because it seems like you have everything you wanted, but I know you're miserable. I don't understand how you can be so miserable when you've always gotten anything your heart desires."

 _'...I want someone to love me,'_ she thought. _'I want someone who's worthy of my respect to look at me and cherish me and love me.'_ She sighed. "You can't ever love me as long as I'm chief, can you."

"I can't love you as long as you think you're better than me."

"Hm." She happened to glance down at the desk, and was surprised to see that as they'd talked, he'd been doodling a picture on the back of the document of a beautiful but unhappy-looking young woman. ...A woman with hair braided in the same style hers was now. "Is that...is that me?" She couldn't be sure, since she'd never seen herself before.

"Yeah."

"...Can I keep that picture?"

"What? No! It's on the back of-" He paused, then tugged a notebook close and tore a page out of it. He sketched, more purposefully this time, sometimes glancing up at her for reference. Then he handed her the finished drawing. "You can keep that one."

She stared at it. It was a picture of her throwing an axe, and she liked the active pose quite a lot. She didn't have nearly as much time to train these days. "Thank you."

He pecked her cheek. "You're welcome. Now go on downstairs, okay?"

She eyed him, not liking the order even though he'd said it nicely. But it was a pretty harmless order, and she _had_ resolved to try, right? "...Good night, Hiccup." She went downstairs.

o.o.o.o.o

About five or six months after their wedding, Astrid was silent during breakfast, and Hiccup quickly gave up trying to engage her in conversation. However, she caught hold of his arm as he was getting up from the table. "Hiccup..."

He looked at her inquiringly.

"I'm pretty sure I'm pregnant."

He closed his eyes for a long moment. Then he opened them again and said quietly, "Okay."

"I was trying to avoid it, I don't even know yet whether I want children or not, and I _didn't_ make a mistake, it's just...it's never 100% foolproof, sometimes a kid manages to sneak in, anyway."

"I know."

"...How do you feel about this?" she asked, genuinely curious, and hoping that hearing his feelings on the matter would help her sort out her own.

"It was bound to happen sooner or later," he mumbled.

"But what do you _think_ about it now that it's happened?"

He sighed. "I don't know, Astrid. I honestly don't. It's just one more thing, you know? We got married, we survived the first few months, and now we're going to have kids. We'll probably survive parenthood, too. ...I hope." His eyes unexpected started to fill with tears. "I don't want to be a father," he whispered. "I'm not ready."

" _I'm_ not ready, either," she snapped.

"...We are so screwed."

" _We'll_ be fine. It's the kid who's screwed."

They both looked at her belly for a long moment.

"Well," Astrid finally remarked, "nice job proving your manhood, I suppose." She was surprised when he _blushed_ , since they were not awkward, inexperienced adolescents anymore. She found that she suddenly didn't have the heart to say the next part, which was, _'Assuming the baby makes it to term and is born healthy.'_ There were not enough of those even for robust, stereotypical Viking couples, so it seemed a bit premature to have high expectations of Hiccup succeeding where more impressive men had failed.

"It'd be nice if I could still be a man even if I never had kids," Hiccup muttered.

Astrid stared at him for too long, unexpectedly struck by the statement. _'Of_ course _he's a man,'_ she thought, smiling a little as she remembered the best of their sexual exploits. _'Anyone who can do those things to me is most certainly a man.'_

The smile faded as she recalled the fact that Hiccup was considered by far the least manly non-female on the island. The two impressions of him did not fit together, and for the first time, she felt a bit of doubt about her people's longstanding assumptions. _'He's stick-thin and weak as a kitten and probably doesn't have a warlike bone in his body, but...he's still a man. He can still sire my children. ...I_ want _him to be the father of my children. And I...I think...I_ know _he doesn't need to sire children in order to prove his manhood.'_

"Astrid?"

"There's work to do," she said gruffly, "just like any other day. Let's go."

"Right."

o.o.o

Author's Notes: This fic has a sequel called _Carried Off_ , which will be posted separately.

By the way, the music video for P!nk's song "Try" suits Hiccup & Astrid's relationship in this fic very well.

A lot of readers were telling me that they feel like Astrid's physical abuse is out of character, so I wanted to address that in an author's note (rather than typing it over and over again in individual messages ^^; ).

My reasoning is that Astrid is a lot more hopeless and stressed out in this AU, not to mention constantly undernourished and probably sleep-deprived. She's only just started to see Hiccup as a person (though she's already established the habit of disrespecting and dismissing him, which is hard to break), and she's often super-frustrated that his small (in her opinion) contributions to the village keep getting so heavily outweighed by his faults (both real and perceived). And she, _like all the Hooligans_ , IS a naturally violent person, anyway - rough physical interaction is _normal_ to them, and Hiccup is the odd man out because he's the only one who doesn't automatically resort to forceful physical interaction when he wants to express himself or convey something. He also seems to have a more normal, realistic physical endurance, as opposed to the superhuman and/or cartoony physical resilience of the other Hooligans. It's difficult for them to understand that, and almost impossible (at this time) for them to think that his comparative physical fragility might not necessarily be a bad thing.

All that combined is why I think Astrid's natural reaction is to physically strike out, particularly when she's subconsciously seeing her target as less-than-a-person, when she's mentally and physically stressed, and has lost certain inhibitions. She is not a cold-blooded abuser; she is overwhelmed by her feelings and hasn't yet figured out how to establish and maintain self-control when it comes to this issue.


End file.
